faith – Jaime Alexis Stathis

Nanny Must’ve Sent You From Heaven

Mimi often woke up in the morning disoriented, and began the day asking questions for which neither of us had the right answer. “Where’s Poppy” she’d want to know, and we’d tell her that her husband had died two year prior. “Jesus Christ,” Mimi said, “You’ve gotta be kidding me. Where the hell have I been?”

“Want more coffee, Mimi?” I asked, attempting to keep her in the present.

“How about Alice?” Mimi asked, “Alice hasn’t been around in ages. Is she mad at me?” Every morning while we nibbled on toast and scrambled eggs or Mimi’s favorite—a hard roll from the bagel shop with butter and jelly on both sides—Mimi inquired on the whereabouts of her husband and three sisters, and my mother and I took turns telling her—as if for the first time—that they’d all died.

By the time we reached the end of the line of questions, we’d barely get a breath in edgewise before Mimi started in again at the top. My mother often ran from the room, face in her hands either from laughter or tears, leaving me to break the news, again. Mimi wanted all the details for each person including cause of death, date of death, if Mimi had been notified, and if had there been a proper wake and burial.

“I can’t believe nobody told me,” Mimi pondered with each one, both hurt and pissed, her heart breaking dozens of times every day. In the beginning, my mother and I were patient, and we’d give her the details, but after multiple rounds we lost our stamina for the specifics, and answered Mimi’s questions with one-word answers:

Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead

It was brutal and direct, but we were doing our best. We hated lying to Mimi, but my mother and I later learned that it’s best not to give more information than the dementia patient can process. For example, if they think their sister is alive but they just haven’t seen her lately, it’s best to keep it simple and respond with something neutral like, “Hmmm. You know, I haven’t seen Virginia in a little while either.” The middle stages of memory loss are tricky—Mimi couldn’t put her finger on it, but she had a hunch that she didn’t know. “I’m all mixed up,” she’d say to us, “I don’t know if I’m coming or going.” And then she’d laugh, because laughter was Mimi’s best defense.

Mimi’s three sisters were her best friends and she saw them every day unless someone was traveling. They ate more meals together than they did with their own husbands, and it was as if Mimi could feel it in her body that she hadn’t seen her sisters. Lying to Mimi felt wrong, even if it was best for her, and when my endurance for the dance had worn out, I’d answer her question with another question. “How about lasagna tonight? We’ll make it from scratch, you and me?”

Shortly after I showed up to help take care of Mimi, it became clear to me that her mood was most manageable when we rooted in the present. We went for rides in the car, got manicures, and watched the news, but nothing grounded Mimi more than watching me cook. As the days turned wintery, we went for fewer walks and rides in the car, which meant more time in the house, which could be a danger zone for the three of us. “I can’t stay cooped up like this,” Mimi would say, “I feel like I’m suffocating.”

I came up with the idea to prepare our main meal of the day cooking-show style, which meant I cut and measured everything into little glass bowls before starting the performance. I did this so that the putting together of a meal leaned away from the utilitarian and into the territory of an actual event, though Mimi was the sole attendee to my show. I usually started right after breakfast, afraid that if we missed a beat Mimi might wander into dangerous mental territory, might get upset, might forget that she loved me. Left alone in the sketchy neighborhood that her mind had become, Mimi could get nasty. She’d get up in my face.“Who the hell died and made you boss?” My mother was always afraid Mimi would throw a game-changing punch. “Cover your teeth,” my mother whispered, covering her own mouth with an open palm behind Mimi’s back, as if me losing a tooth to my grandmother’s unlikely punch was our biggest worry.

“You have something to say to me, Maureen, you can say it to my face,” Mimi roared as my mother shrunk into herself even deeper. My mother was afraid of her mother—she was afraid to challenge her, afraid to confront her, afraid to lay down any sort of law. By default, it was up to me.

I tried to stay ahead of Mimi’s temper, like doctors advise staying ahead of the pain after surgery, so as soon as breakfast was over, I’d sit Mimi down at the kitchen table with a cup of tea and a cardigan draped over her shoulders. I peeled carrots, diced onion, and minced garlic. I filled little bowls with ingredients. I braised bones, caramelized vegetables, and reduced stocks into glazes. I deveined and reconstituted. I did not cut any corners. While I worked, Mimi and I chatted. We talked about what I was making, and I told her step-by-step how I was going to do it. I’d tell her about a childhood friend I visited, or a book I was reading, or a movie I’d watched the night before after she’d fallen asleep. As long as Mimi engaged in real-time conversation she stayed safe from the questions she couldn’t remember the answers to. I’d ask if she wanted to help, but she usually didn’t.

“I’m enjoying myself just watching you,” Mimi said, “It’s like being in the kitchen with Nanny, with my mother.” I loved that she loved it, so day after day I hunted down time-consuming recipes from The New York Times, Zuni Café, Marcella Hazan, Julia Child. I felt like a disciple to advanced cooking techniques, and sometimes worked on two or three meals at once, sweating the eggplant for the next day, brining the chicken for the day after that.

The downstairs kitchen, Mimi’s domain, remained like a warzone, but I filled our upstairs kitchen with smells of a home and loaded our plates with colorful, nutritious food. After dinner, my mother did the dishes while I sorted the leftovers, and Mimi stayed at the table. Sometimes, even after hours of being in the kitchen together, Mimi not only forgot that had I spent the afternoon cooking, but also that she’d just eaten a full meal.

“I don’t know what you’re doing babydoll, but if you’re fixing something to eat don’t worry about me. I’m not hungry.” Her words took out my knees. I slumped against the sink. I didn’t want to get mad at Mimi, didn’t want to use a sharp tone. I didn’t want to say, “Of course you’re not hungry! You just ate a roast chicken dinner and still have chocolate frosting on your mouth from the cake I walked twenty blocks to buy!”

My cooking-show pace wasn’t sustainable on a daily basis, and sometimes I was too emotionally drained to even think about cooking, so we’d eat leftovers or get takeout from one of the thirty ethnic restaurants in the neighborhood. There were also days that we had other responsibilities, like getting Mimi to a doctor’s appointment. It wasn’t the physicality of moving Mimi to the appointment—physically she was fit—it was the fact that Mimi had spent her life avoiding doctors at all costs. “You want to have something wrong with you?” She mused, “Go see a doctor! You’ll go in without a worry in the world and come out with ten prescriptions!”

Mimi’s prescriptions included Hershey bars, chocolate milkshakes, and jelly donuts.

One night, after a particularly taxing day of wrangling Mimi to a doctor’s appointment, I offered to help Mimi get ready for bed. She usually wanted to do it by herself, but that night I saw the fatigue creeping up from her ankles. She was too tired to even wash her face, so after peeling Mimi out of her bra and snuggling her into flannel pajamas, I settled her into the broken-down recliner where she slept, the place that had been my grandfather’s until he vacated that throne. I found a clean facecloth and put warm water and a bit of soap on it. I brought the facecloth to the recliner and Mimi tilted her head up, closed her eyes, and let me wash her face.

I looked down at my grandmother’s feet, toes squeezed together tight inside nylon knee-highs. “Want a foot massage?” She smiled. I squeezed my fingers inside the tight band just under her knees and peeled off the stockings. I fetched a basin of warm water and soaked the towel, then washed and dried Mimi’s feet. She was bashful, but didn’t resist. I cuffed her pajama pants as high as they would go, and rubbed lotion up and down her legs.

“Well, shit,” Mimi joked, “I’d have shaved if I’d known this was going to happen!” I reminded her that she only shaved for weddings and funerals, and Mimi’s quick wit was on-point.

“Well I hope you’re not dressing me for my wake! I’m not dead yet! And I know I’m not getting married…Or am I?” Mimi couldn’t remember the basics of life, but she never missed an opportunity to crack a joke.

I creamed Mimi’s feet, and then found a cozy pair of socks that I put on her before tucking the blanket in tight. I stood to leave, but Mimi held out her hands so I washed, dried, and creamed those too.

“Ok,” I said, “You all set?” I should’ve known better, I should’ve known my Mimi.

“Do we have any cookies?” Mimi asked, “And maybe a little glass of milk?” I set a tall stack of Oreos and a short glass of milk on her side table that was cluttered with expired coupons and crystal dishes full of half-disintegrated rubber bands and paper clips distorted beyond utility. I kissed Mimi goodnight, and was walking away when she grabbed my hand.

“Nanny must’ve sent you from heaven to take care of me,” Mimi said, and I choked back tears because I felt it too, knew she was right. The strength I had was coming from somewhere outside me, but there was nowhere else I wanted to be. “I don’t know what I’d do without you,” Mimi said, “Please don’t ever leave me.”

I remember this day. It was a cold, damp day, and Mimi and I went to get manicures because we were at our wit’s end inside the house. We got out, and the mood improved. I remember thinking it was silly when I asked the gal to take a photo of us with our nails drying, but now I’m happy as hell that
I’m not afraid to do the silly thing.

Discovering My Boyfriend Has a Wife

*names have been changed

I’m no stranger to men capable of lying, and have dated the full gamut of emotionally unavailable men who’ve spun everything from half-truths to full-on whoppers. In my quiver of failed relationships are drug addicts, drug dealers, and a Latino, but the one I was blindsided by and wholly duped by was the one I’d promised to avoid at all costs: the married man.

I met Bob online and had no reason to find it suspicious that he was in town on business. The fact that he even had a job was a promising start; so many Missoula men aspire only to make enough money to have a new pair of skis/fly rod/dirt bike and a few extra bucks in their pockets. Bob works for the top medical device company and his work brings him to Missoula weekly, though he lives a few hours away. I now know that might have been one of the few things he told me that was actually true.

Bob promised to make me laugh or at least pick up the dinner tab. I analyzed the two pictures in his online dating profile and couldn’t tell if I thought he was cute or not, but he formed complete sentences and used proper grammar, which gave him a leg up on the majority.

I’ve never been a fan of long-distance relationships—they always seem neither here nor there—but I was up for trying something new, and a boyfriend in town just a few days every week could be exactly what I needed. Given my above-mentioned dating history, I tend to toward emotional unavailability myself. I’m certainly capable of more, but until the lesson is learned it’s easier to stick to what is familiar.

When Bob invited me to dinner I was currently having it, but he was persistent—only in town for the night—and suggested a glass of wine and dessert. Without putting too much thought into it I agreed, but forewarned him I’d be showing up in my dog-walking clothes. I called it my “Missoula casual,” and was proud of my confidence to show up in yoga pants for a first date, but truth was I didn’t feel like putting too much time or effort into someone I hadn’t even met yet. So I showed up for our first date in pants I’d picked up off the floor.

I told Bob I’m incredibly direct, and that if nothing else I’m authentic. I made it clear that I have no intention of pretending to be someone I’m not. I told him I passed that class years ago, then promptly retired. He found me clever. My confidence impressed him.

I wasn’t sure what to think about Bob’s Western getup that included a salad-plate-sized belt buckle and a black Stetson, but we dove into conversation and connected quickly. He’s from Idaho and has a hick accent, but he’s not a redneck, and he complimented me on my ability and willingness to see through his exterior and not judge him. He warned that his personality grows on people like something of a fungus, you just have to give it a chance, some time, and the right environment. I thought he was both witty and sharp, two of the top things I look for in a date.

Bob asked, “I’m not like the guys you usually date, am I?” I thought about the fact that when I told him I like to travel he mentioned he really liked Charleston and Laguna Beach when he went to those places for work, but I didn’t have the heart to tell him that when I said travel that wasn’t even close to what I meant. Instead I said, “Do you mean the Wranglers, the part about you being from Idaho, or the fact that you have a job?” We both laughed—it was all of those things and more—but inside I wondered if it was the Idaho bit that would be the great divider.

Bob told me I’m not like the women he usually dates—he always dates women who also have children—and that it would take some getting used to for him. He also told me he’d never dated a woman on his level, someone who’ll correct his grammar, someone who asks questions and seeks answers. Someone with the gumption to call him out when he’s incorrect. I’m guessing he’d also never dated a woman with a New Yorker subscription, a heavily-stamped passport, or a self-reliance that is both a blessing and a curse.

Although I willingly went out with him, I didn’t buy any stock. I didn’t think I drank his Kool-Aid, but it appears he’d metaphorically roofied me. I was proud of my newly cemented boundaries, boundaries that had previously been only lines in the sand. I didn’t see any patterns repeating and really thought I’d broken the mold on my past behavior with men.

We had a good enough time on our first date that Bob rearranged his schedule and took me out the next night too but this time he told me to pick the place. I chose one of my favorite restaurants and he paid, of course. He even used his corporate AmEx for his dinner, and a personal card for mine. Wow, I thought, what an honest guy.

I’d amped up my program and wore a skirt and boots—which Bob wasn’t shy about admiring—though he complimented me in a respectful way, not an “I-want-to-tear-off-your-clothes” way. He confessed that on our first date he’d been so engrossed listening to my stories that he’d completely forgotten to check out my boobs, and he’s a boob guy. My heart broke open a bit—he was more into my mind than my body—and it only barely occurred to me that he might have been full of shit.
After dinner we went for a drive up past my house toward the wilderness area and I made him promise not to kidnap me. I didn’t feel in danger, but made a joke to play it safe, “I know a lot of people who live up here, so if you’re looking for a place to dispose the body this is not it.” He laughed, told me not to worry. We drove around for over an hour, and as we crept slowly back to town he put his hand on my knee, looked me in the eye and said, “Can you tell I’m not ready to say goodnight just yet?”

I could, and it was sweet; we hadn’t even kissed yet. There was something lovely and old-fashioned about the pace, and because I wasn’t sure if I wanted a boyfriend in town, a long-distance relationship, or a boyfriend at all, I figured it was worth a shot to spend time with a kind man I could have interesting conversation with.

Bob texted me when he got back to his hotel to say he was sorry he’d promised not to kidnap me, and that I smelled fantastic. He sent me a link to a country song about a guy who wishes he hadn’t been too scared to kiss the girl goodnight. He asked, “If I stay tomorrow night will you go out with me again?”

He picked me up for our third date with wine and flowers. Earlier that afternoon he’d asked me my favorite colors, and then wore a shirt that was both blue and red. Bob believes himself clever, and in many ways he’s right. I invited him into my house after dinner, and we talked for hours before finally kissing in front of my bookshelf. With books as our witness I thought it auspicious.

I knew Bob has three kids in Bozeman he’d be spending the weekend with, and that I might not hear from him much. That was fine with me because I had my own plans and was on the verge of suffocation from three dates in a row. Bob texted me all weekend and then called early Monday morning because he had more work in Missoula and hoped I’d see him again. He told me he can usually “take it or leave it” when it comes to dating—his work and kids are the most important—but he felt different this time. He really liked me.

Bob spent three nights at my house that week, and I showed him the location of my hide-a-key. Our budding relationship catapulted to new territory. When we went to the supermarket together he grabbed my ass and kissed me, told me to get used to his public displays. We cooked together and he told me that was something he could definitely get used to. I introduced Bob to French Press coffee, to which he quickly became addicted. I showed him how to make it and helped him shop for his own pot, but he said it wouldn’t be as good without the beautiful view.

He leapt out of bed in the morning to let the dog out and feed him. It crushed my heart seeing them pad down the hall together, Bob calling Lucky “buddy” and then, on the way back to bed, saying “Don’t tell Mommy I gave you a little extra.” He noticed I was running low on dog food, and I told him I’d bought it but left it in the car. He immediately started toward my car and I said, “I can do it myself,” to which he replied, “But you don’t always have to.” Bob hauled in not only the forty-pound bag of dog food, but had tucked my gum, almond butter and garbanzo beans under his chin and armpits. Like it was no big deal.

This was not a casual hookup, not a booty call.

Bob made himself at home very quickly, which I appreciated, though it was slightly unnerving the way he inventoried my cupboards and cabinets, how he knew where to find floss and aspirin. He left an entire suitcase at my house that second week, and when I asked him if he’d miss anything he’d left in there he told me “No, I only miss where I left it.”

It was borderline too much, but it felt too good to deny.

My arrangement with Bob was unlike anything I’d had before, but it seemed to be just what I needed. I tend to be feel suffocated and need more space than most in my togetherness, so the fact that Bob is a traveling salesman and would be in Missoula a couple of nights most weeks seemed great. I’d have time for my friends, for writing, and for myself. I’d retain my personal rhythm and sense of self.

When partnered I tend to lose my grip on my own needs, so the time away provided a natural governor. Bob worried he wasn’t around enough for me, but I told him that my life was complete without him and that I’d long since given up thinking a man could bring me happiness.

He told me I was refreshing. He told me two of the hottest things about me are the fact that I have neither a full-length mirror nor a television. I liked the way he was thinking, and the night he suggested we get in bed at 9:00pm to read I had one of the best sleeps I’d had in years. I thought I’d won the jackpot.

Bob continued to spend several nights at my house every week, often driving several hundred miles out of his way so we could see each other. He told me “You’re not out of my way; you are my way. I’m here because I want to be.” Despite the fact that he told me he loved being “home” with me, he always booked hotel rooms so his boss wouldn’t wonder why his expense reports lacked lodging, and said any night I wanted to we could get a hot tub room and room service though we never did. Another reason he booked rooms was so he could maintain his diamond status with Hilton for free upgrades. His reasoning sounded pragmatic and didn’t raise a red flag for me, at least not overtly.

Despite the fact that Bob and I were playing house, we were still very much getting to know each other and had a lot of questions and background to cover. I was confused because his online dating profile said he was thirty-four and lives in Dillon, Montana, but he was actually thirty-seven and living in Bozeman. It seemed fishy, so I asked. He never missed a beat, and told me that he just hadn’t updated his profile in a while. I took this as a good sign that he’d been divorced and dating for at least three years. This was comforting because I didn’t want to be the first after a fifteen-year relationship, basically his entire adult life.

He also told me that when he took the job in Montana he thought he was going to live in Dillon, because it’s the center of his enormous territory, but his kids’ mom wanted to live in Bozeman. He drives 80,000 miles per year and spends 180 nights in hotels, so he’s rarely home and it didn’t much matter to him as long as the kids were happy and in a place he could easily get to them on weekends.

He told me he rents a room from friends in Dillon (in three months he never went there, and after the first mention it never came up again), and also has a little cabin down the road from his kids and their mom for weekend convenience. He went into details about the cabin (one room, no kitchen) and it’s historical significance in the Gallatin Valley. Because he’s rarely home, or so he told me, he didn’t need much of a place, and gave me details that bolstered his story but were unnecessary.

The parts of his story added up; at the time I had no reason to doubt.

One night Bob was doing paperwork at the desk in my kitchen while I heated up chicken soup I’d made over the weekend. The room was quiet, and felt more calm than eerie. My thoughts drifted, and then without thinking I turned to him, and with my spoon still in the pot, I asked him, “Are you married?”

I think I expected a fight. But instead his face softened, he made eye contact and said, “Yes.” He extended a hand to me, but I’d planted my feet. I returned his gaze but jacked up the level of hardness and intensity until he spoke again. In the weighted moments between words I wondered, depending on his answer, if I had the guts to throw a pot of boiling soup in his face. My pulse closed around my throat.

“I’m separated,” he said, and “have been for five years. We’re still married because it’s the only way for me to have access to my kids whenever I want. If we went to court I’d get Wednesdays and every other weekend. I’m not always around on Wednesdays, and I don’t see them enough as it is.”

“Your dating profile lists you as divorced,” I said, and he told me that it actually said he was separated, but I couldn’t go back and check because he had deactivated it after our third date because he liked me so much he didn’t need to keep looking. I don’t want to say he looked smug, but I’m quite sure now that he did.

I’m fairly certain his profile said divorced; I would never have gotten involved with a separated man. Married men looking for dates are on my permanent blacklist. In my opinion separated people need to wait it out. I’m leery of anyone getting out of a relationship who needs someone else waiting in the wings.

When I was a teenager and young adult my mother had relationships with married men and I saw how sad it made her. I never wanted to be on either end of that grief. I vowed to never engage in a relationship with someone who didn’t or couldn’t make me a priority, someone who still had a pair of boots under someone else’s bed. I promised myself before I even had a driver’s license that I would never get involved with a married man. Never.

Not even if he was no longer in love, not even if he wasn’t happy, not even if he though I’d hung the moon.

The previous year had brought a parade of married men into my life, all of them old friends, and it felt like a test. I was living with my mother, and together we were caring for my grandmother and facing the effects of dementia complicated by hoarding and an unwillingness to let people in her house to do repairs or assist with her care.

I’d been working on it, but had some lingering resentment toward my mother. She and I had both had advanced degrees in loving someone despite not always approving of her actions, and were both well aware that the door swings both ways on that.

I couldn’t help but wonder if the married men were showing up to test me or if they were showing up to offer me a different perspective on my mother. All I know was that they did show up and their agendas ran the gamut. There’s always a silver lining, and the silver lining was that I found myself able to truly forgive my mother.

Some just wanted to tell me of the crushes they had on me since the early 1990s that had remarkably stood the test of time. Some told me how much they admired my independent life out west, and that they were happy to see how well I’d grown up. Some of them wanted to take me out, some wanted to hook up, some just wanted to talk. One even said he’d leave his wife for me despite the fact that we hadn’t seen each other in fifteen years, though I neither asked nor wanted such a thing.

I sometimes engaged in more conversation than I should, out of curiosity more than anything—a curiosity to fathom the mind of a man who strays—but in the end I always told them the same thing: I deserve more than that and you know it.

One guy and I had unfinished business from a relationship in 1992 that almost got a second chance in 2001 when I was getting divorced. He’d asked me to move to his city, but I decided instead to move to Montana and we never spoke again until years later when he requested my friendship on Facebook.

It turned out he was coming to New York on business, so we arranged a lunch. In his blazer pocket he had photos from when we first fell in love and he spread them on the table between us. I asked about his wife and kids. We ate off each other’s plates, and after lunch we navigated lower Manhattan’s slush puddles and finally talked about what had happened between us.

I told him I was sorry; I owed him that as I’d basically disappeared on him without much explanation. I told him I was happy he’d found love, that he had a good life, that he’d gotten more than I could have given him. The conversation was way overdue, and it was an enormous relief to get it off my chest, to provide us both with closure.

He had time before his dinner meeting, so after walking all the way down to Ground Zero and looping back we popped into his hotel for a drink. While we sat there, semi-awkward with the elephant now comfortably bellied up between us, he received a call letting him know that his business partner’s flight had been delayed due to snow. He not only had reservations at one of the city’s best restaurants, but it was a fully comped meal.

“You’d be silly not to join me,” he said and I wasn’t sure, but I called my mother to tell her I wouldn’t be home for dinner. “I had a feeling,” she said, in a tone that sounded neither nice nor approving.

The comped meal included every course the restaurant offered and each one came with wine or cocktails. Although we sat there cozied up for hours in a corner booth, the end felt abrupt, so we walked around the corner to a French place with tin ceilings and a light that sparkled but was muted and understated as if partially eclipsed. I drank far more glasses of rosé than anyone should have in a moment like that.

We talked. Nothing intimate, just talking, and then around midnight we stumbled into a cab to his hotel, a cab that we’d arranged to also take me home to Queens. “I’m not ready to say goodbye,” he said, “I can’t have another goodbye like 1992.”

I was really too drunk to show up at my mother and grandmother’s house, so we went up to his room. We stayed up most of the night talking on top of the covers until we fell asleep in our clothes. We laughed in the morning—there wasn’t much to feel guilty about—and then headed to Grand Central where he’d catch a train to Connecticut for his meetings and I’d go underground to board my subway home.

We had a little time before his train, so we got coffees and a croissant to share. We walked through Grand Central Terminal, one of the most romantic places in the world, and the backdrop of millions of partings.

I walked him all the way to the track. We referred to the “best lunch ever” and laughed. All we’d done was delay the goodbye from the night before, and he said, “I’m still not ready. I can’t handle another goodbye like this.”

“But this is all we have,” I told him, “Another goodbye.”

I gripped my latte and walked away.

After the 7 train crosses inside the East River it goes above ground, and in the unforgiving light of the morning I sobbed behind my glasses. Most New Yorkers don’t notice much of what other subway riders are doing, but I felt exposed. Walking home I ran into my mother on the street and we went into the house where, once safely in the kitchen, I let it rip. I stood there in clothes I’d been wearing for twenty-four hours, and I cried. I showed more vulnerability to my mother than I had in decades.

I rarely admit to regrets—claim to have none and love buckling up for the roller coaster of life—but I revealed to my mother that morning that I might have actually blown it thirteen years earlier.

“Why didn’t you want to be with him after your divorce?” she asked, “Why didn’t you go?”

I didn’t have a great answer, but I wailed, “Because I wanted to move to Missoula.” Some things are better kept from mothers, and I’d never told mine of the disaster that had ensued when I shacked up with my boarding-school boyfriend in Montana. In real life, removed from the emotional turmoil of an extended lunch with a great guy I’d foolishly snuffed, I don’t actually regret moving to Missoula—it’s given me so much—but in that moment I wanted to something foreign to me: I wanted to turn back time.

After Bob fessed to being married I had a lot of questions, so we spent the next three hours sitting at the table while he explained. We had a light dinner and too much wine, but it seemed like he needed liquid courage for this one. I wanted to know how someone has three kids with a woman he’s not in love with, why he’s still not divorced after a five-year separation, I wanted to know if Donna knows he’s dating. He had an answer for everything. He opened up, he was vulnerable, he told me what felt like a complete story. I didn’t dump him and made a concession I wouldn’t normally make. (See above: NEVER.)

Bob told me about his father’s alcoholism and abuse, about his mother taking the kids to Oregon, about his sisters running away, about how every one of his siblings (minus the adopted gay brother) had kids pretty much out of school. He told me that he got involved with Donna when he was young and for all the wrong reasons. Then she got pregnant. They tried to make it work and she got pregnant again. He told me they only got married before their third child was born and only did it for the health insurance and because his family pressured him.

He told me that when he moved to Eugene for college his mother told him that he needed to go to church more so he promptly stopped going. I knew he grew up in uber-religious Southern Idaho, but he’d told me he wasn’t Mormon. I didn’t think to ask what religion he grew up with, and realize now that I probably didn’t ask because I didn’t want to know.

It’s funny how that works.

Bob never mentioned that he ever started going to church again, but only that there had been pressure from his family to marry the mother of his children. He loves the kids but referred to the marriage as his biggest mistake. I offered him a contrasting story—my story—about getting married and divorced young. I told him that when I was married I took my birth control pill at the same time every day because I wasn’t sure and I didn’t want to get myself into a situation where I was stuck. He flinched when I said “stuck” and I felt sort of bad. I told him I had a hard time understanding his story, but know he’d grown up differently than I had and that it’s wrong for me to judge.

In addition to having access to the kids whenever he wants, Bob told me that another reason he’s stayed married to Donna is because his company offers some of the best health insurance, and she not only has some shoulder problems, but also some mental health issues. He knows that keeping his kids’ mother happy is what’s best for his kids.

And now I’m saying: I’ll bet Donna has some mental health issues!

I periodically asked Bob about Donna. I wanted to confirm that she knows he dates, that she wasn’t under the impression that they’re in a committed relationship but just on a break. I wanted to know that she didn’t want him back.

Bob seamlessly assuaged my feelings and alleviated any guilt that he determined was unnecessary for me to feel. He told me their relationship was limited to talks about finances and the children, but one week he told me that over the weekend Donna had made him laugh, which he said was something I wouldn’t hear from him very often. She’d commented that he smelled like sandalwood and asked if he’d been in a “hippie house.”

I didn’t think it was all that funny, especially when he told me he’d told her no. I thought to myself: the Hilton doesn’t smell like sandalwood…I wanted to know why he wasn’t just upfront about the fact that he’s dating me and he said that he encourages Donna to date, but she’s “let herself go” over the years and lacks the confidence. He said that given her low self-esteem he didn’t think it was fair to flaunt his hot Missoula girlfriend.

He was cunning and crafty the way he used flattery to divert the graveness of his indiscretion. I don’t consider myself easily conned, but I fell for it.

Like I said: I’ll bet Donna has some mental health issues.

Despite the fact that we were full-on playing house, I never really considered Bob my boyfriend. I’m not sure why I shied away from that label, but he felt more like someone I was trying on than getting serious about. Deep down I knew he was more of a lesson than a love, though that line is often blurry. Regardless of the kids in Bozeman and the job that took him everywhere, I just wasn’t sure if he and I could have a future together.

I continued to have concerns about the fact that he grew up not only in Idaho, but not even in a town, just at an intersection between two rundown dots on the map, a place riddled with poverty and a deeply-rooted belief that God would save them all. Bob assured me he’d come a long way from there and had worked hard for it. He sent me essays from Elephant Journal and I joked that he must be the only boy from that intersection reading articles like that. He added “For at least two-hundred miles around, more if they never left.”

It put things into a perspective I wasn’t sure I was willing to either grasp or accept, but dating guys from my neck of the woods hadn’t actually worked out for me so I was being open-minded and trying something different.

Bob told me in the beginning that he wanted a relationship with me. He said he was so relieved to have met me, because all of the women he met online seemed to only want sex. He wanted sex too, he said, but he also craved connection, something he never had with Donna. He told me in the very beginning that he’d had a vasectomy, but if I wanted children of my own he certainly didn’t want that to be the deal-breaker. “There are ways around it,” he said.

We never used a condom. Not even once. Compared to my relationships in the past, the intimacy didn’t feel premature—I felt like I knew and trusted him—so I focused on that. I compared the present to the past—dangerous business at best—and drew conclusions with very incomplete information. We’d spent at least twenty hours staring into each other’s eyes and talking before becoming intimate, and even though I knew that pregnancy wasn’t the only concern with unprotected sex I did what so many do: I got caught up in the moment.

The night we went all the way his condoms were in his car. “I bought them right after I met you,” he said, “because I wanted to be prepared.” But then he wasn’t. I had some in my nightstand, but I knew they’d be too big for him and didn’t want that embarrassment for either of us, and, well, I think most of us have been in that situation. It’s not smart, it’s not right, but it just is what often happens when two people who like each other are naked in bed together.

Over the few months we were sleeping together I brought it up a few times—“I can’t believe we’ve never used a condom…”—and I don’t recall him every having anything to say about it.

Bob was attentive; he paid attention. If I told him I had a meeting, he called to check on how it went. If he knew I had a long day and he was getting off work earlier than I was, he’d text me and asked me if I wanted to go out to dinner or stay home, and if I picked home (always his choice) he’d have my favorite food waiting for me. He chose wine similar to what I ordered in restaurants, so I knew he was paying attention. He set the table, he walked the dog, he greeted me at the door with a kiss.

Bob liked coming to my house, and had told me that Donna was a slob. He said that for years he worked 60 hours/week and did all the house cleaning, but he tired of it and stopped. Then he moved out. I always made sure my house was tidy when he arrived even if the visit was unexpected and I’d spend a frenzied hour before work putting clothes in the hamper, doing dishes, wiping all surfaces and vacuuming. I always, always vacuumed, which strikes me as a bit odd, though I’m not really sure why. Bob appreciated it and told me, so I kept doing it.

Bob kept up his end of “house keeping” and he stocked my fridge and freezer. He’d stop at Costco for my favorite oranges, for salmon, for chocolate-covered almonds. He bought bacon and eggs so we could have a good breakfast together, because although we went out for breakfast once he just liked being in the house with me. He bought in bulk.

Bob told me out of the gate that it takes him a long time to introduce women he’s dating to his kids, and I respected that. I get uneasy when someone wants me to meet his kids too soon, or if I feel like he’s prematurely cleaning out half of his closet for me. I wasn’t in a hurry; the pace was fine with me. He was concerned that he thought I “deserved a weekend with him,” and I assured him that his kids are the number one priority and having him a few nights every week was enough. I wasn’t lying.

Regardless of what I said, Bob put in effort to show me that I mattered. He had a business trip to California and booked his ticket to and from Missoula so he could see me on both ends, including one weekend. I was grateful for his effort, and only felt a little bit guilty that he took time from his kids to be with me. Although I said it wasn’t important to me, Bob was adamant that we spend Valentine’s Day together. He stayed four nights with me that week, including Friday—when I roasted a chicken I’d prepped days in advance, just in case—and stayed until noon on Valentine’s Day.

I sent him a text thanking him for his effort and for starting his day with me. He accidently took a screen shot of that text, and when he synced his phone it saved to his photos. Neither of us would know this for another eight weeks, but it’s when Donna confirmed my existence in her husband’s life.

He said I was a friend.

My fondness for Bob waned considerably in March. He came to see me the night before I left to visit my mother in Florida, and he hoped to pick me up from the airport, because we were going to be apart for eleven days. I thought I’d miss him—and at first I did—but had no idea the turn the story was going to take.

Without any possibility of making plans to see each other, his communication was poor. I heard from him, but his messages were short, cryptic, and felt like riddles. I hate riddles. We’d gotten into a habit of sending interesting articles to each other and I sent him one, fairly benign, about parenting. It somehow took us down a rabbit hole of politics, and he became irate.

We noticed on day one that we have a lot of similarities. I told my friends “his brain is like mine,” and that makes me a bit nauseated now, but what I meant was attention to detail, excellent memory, inquisitiveness. Bob and I joked that we needed to have a fight to see how that went, and we’d tried to have some but with no luck—we always wound up agreeing!—though it now seems he was playing a game and agreeing so he could keep seeing with me. But finally, via text and email from across the country, we had our first fight.

One of his emails attacked my “typical liberal rhetoric,” which he’d previously been enamored by, and he used a lot of exclamations and told me to back up my position and “cite examples!!!” Within two minutes I sent him an article from The Atlantic that also cited references from the New York Times and other sources that, while left-leaning, are well-known to be top-quality fact checkers.

Bob didn’t reply for twenty-four hours. When he did he’d changed the subject and simply asked, “How is the beach?” I’d been irritated over his lack of response though it revealed to me how he acts when he’s wrong: he disappears.

I was concerned about Bob being politically or religiously conservative (there’s that Southern Idaho thing again), but he assured me he listens to all sides and considers himself more of an anarchist than anything. By his definition that means people should have absolute freedom to do whatever they want without interference (especially government interference) as long as they’re not bothering anyone else. I now see that Bob’s manifesto and personal definitions of “bothering” and “interfering” were self-serving and limited in point of view; he just wants to do what he wants without consequence.

That was the turning point for me. I couldn’t see him the same way again, and in fighting with him I saw what happens when his feathers are ruffled and it was not attractive.

The Universe stepped in while Bob and I were having our political spat. A guy I’d grown up with appeared in my life and we started writing to each other and talking. Over a few days we were in near-constant communication, and while I told Matt I had a boyfriend, I know that what I was engaging in would be classified as an emotional affair. I’m not so myopic to think that just because Bob was cheating on me (with his wife, if you can wrap your head around that, though it’s quite possibly there were others), that what I was doing wasn’t morally okay in a committed relationship. Though I was, of course, the only one who thought we were in a committed relationship.

Matt is also a writer and traveler, and we had interesting and engaging conversations talking about the interesting parallels our lives have taken since we left our suburban Connecticut hometown. Our commonality and shared history made me realize (again) how important those things are to me, and how it’s not feasible for me to have a relationship with a person like Bob who could even tolerate listening to FOX NEWS unless it was being parodied on Comedy Central. Matt remembered things about childhood—some that I did and some that I didn’t—and I had healing conversations with him I didn’t know I needed.

Bob didn’t pick me up from the airport, and that was fine, but then his work brought him to the other side of his territory, eleven hours away, and it was impossible to see each other. I didn’t care as much as I would have before our political spat, and because I hadn’t built my life around him I was happy to back in Missoula spending time with my friends and with Lucky.

The Universe intervened again, and after a weekend of not hearing from Bob I received a flood of messages from him on a Monday morning. For some reason they hadn’t transmitted through wifi, and arrived all at once when he entered back into cell-phone range. He’d told me that he wanted to come over on Sunday, but because I didn’t received his messages he got no response. Even though my silence was only because I hadn’t received anything to respond to, Bob started to shift. I was fairly sure I’d break up with him the next time I saw him, but when I picked the bones about the argument and his reaction to being wrong he said the magic words: “You’re right.”

We’d made tentative plans to go to Wyoming together at the end of the month because he has customers there and it’s a beautiful place where I also have friends it would’ve been fun to see. Lucky and I could tag along on the work trip and then we’d make a weekend out of it. Bob hadn’t followed up on a plan, and because his communication had been shoddy when I was in Florida—and he’d been working close to the area while I was away—I figured he might have just gone without me.

I’m intuitive, but not actually a mind-reader—which I see worked more in his favor than not—so when Bob told me he was looking forward to our trip I told him that I’d booked appointments for myself and couldn’t go. There was a flicker on his face that looked like rage, but he cleverly disguised it as disappointment. The real truth was that on a deep, cellular level I didn’t feel comfortable getting in a car with him to drive six hours. I have friends down there, but couldn’t shake the image of Lucky and I stranded on the side of a highway. Or worse.

The dynamic had permanently altered. I was booking appointments, making plans with my friends during the week, and setting clear boundaries. The shift in me caused a natural shift in him as well and it started to feel seismic in both strength and depth. I kept thinking I’d break up with Bob, but he kept driving hundreds of miles to see me, and then acted sweet and chivalrous upon arrival.

One afternoon I sat in the pedicure chair reading emails. Bob had surprised me by saying he was coming to town that night, but I’d made plans to have dinner with girlfriends and told him that I couldn’t change it. He was fine and said he’d hang out with Lucky and keep the bed warm. It seemed reasonable, and I was proud of my boundaries. But then I got an email that changed everything.

I saw that Donna, the wife he’s been separated from for five years, had looked at my profile on LinkedIn. No other social media websites let you see who is looking at you, but LinkedIn—because the whole purpose is networking—does. I sent Bob a screenshot with a one-word comment: interesting.

He concurred, said it explained why Donna had been acting “funny” the past few weeks. He said the last time she acted this way she’d hired a lawyer and he had to prepare himself for that. I thought back to their awkward arrangement of staying married for the kids and wondered if Donna doesn’t think it’s as fabulous as he thinks she does.

While I was at dinner with my friends, Bob messaged me that his grandmother was “in a bad way” and he was headed to Idaho to pick up his dad and go see her in the hospital. I didn’t think much of it beyond worrying about his grandma. It takes a real sinister character to lie about a sick grandma, and while I thought Bob might be a secret conservative, I didn’t think he was capable of that low-level lying. I hadn’t yet pegged him as a sociopath.

Bob could have just fessed then, but he didn’t, and he came back one more time to see me, armed with an elaborate story about his grandmother’s condition and how tired he was from spending the night in the hospital with her over the weekend. When he announced he was coming to Missoula that Monday I was honestly surprised, and lacked enthusiasm. He sent a text that said, “salmon for dinner?” but I felt a knot in my gut, not a rise in my heart. I’d grown tired of him thinking he could drop in whenever. There had been another shift.

Bob picked up food for us and we talked a little, but we were both tired and went to bed early. I felt unmoored and emotionally unwound by the fact that Lucky was turning thirteen the next day, and that I’d once again fallen short of the mark in finding a suitable partner for myself so my loyal, loving dog could rest. Bob thought it important to be there with me for Lucky’s birthday morning (he sure had a way of reeling me back in), and said he was looking forward to a lazy morning together.

But I had bad news: I’d booked a morning appointment then a coffee date and walk with friends for Lucky’s birthday. A lazy morning simply wasn’t in the cards. Another shift, another glimmer of rage on Bob’s face.

He tried to get me to cancel, but I was firm. I was seeing a Physical Therapist about issues related to my previously fractured sacrum, and how I could retrain my body out of its old holding patterns. It would take a while for me to see that healing my spine held weight, and was more metaphor than not.When I left that morning I barely hugged or kissed him goodbye. I didn’t do this intentionally; I just did it. He said he might make it back later in the week, but I was flippant. He got the message. I’d detached. The entire week went by and I heard nothing from him. I knew he was taking the kids to Idaho to visit family for their school break, but it was odd. Nothing.

After a full week with no contact I sent a message, then another three. It might have looked a little psycho—after all, I was done, wasn’t I?—but I’m no heartless tinman and I worried. I’d said to him in the beginning of our relationship that it occurred to me that something dire could happen to him—a car accident, a broken leg—and nobody would even know to tell me. All he said was, “Oh how sweet. You care…”

My wheels came off and I reverted back to an old behavior: I snooped. I mean, I didn’t really snoop, but I found his well-concealed Facebook page. He told me he had an inactive account, but I suspected otherwise and finally located him. The challenge was not so much that he has a fairly common name, but that he had himself listed as living in Oregon, a state that according to him he hadn’t lived in in over fifteen years. Tricky. Cagey. Sneaky. I didn’t like the way that felt.

I saw that he’d not only made a post a day earlier, but that he’d tagged Donna in it. I sent him a text about getting “Chummy with Donna again? Does that explain your disappearance?” I also remembered something he’d told me in the beginning that I’d subconsciously filed away for future reference. He’d told me that if he sensed me losing interest or backing away that he’d just disappear. I wrote another message (yes, I’m displaying all my crazy) letting him know that by not responding he was making it clear that he was disappearing. “Message received,” I said.

Bob had tagged two other people in his recent Facebook post, and I clicked on their profiles. I saw that he and Donna had sent a gift to a relative (ironically the same French Press coffee pot I introduced him to) and that he was in a few photos from something called “Memorial.” There were so many things in this situation that are outside the realm of Google, but this one was easy. I quickly learned that Memorial is the Jehovah’s Witnesses version of Easter.

I started researching the Jehovah’s Witnesses and learned that while adultery is frowned upon, if a man repents then the submissive wife is obligated to forgive him. A cornerstone of the JW cult is repenting; if they do then Jehovah forgives. The JW website says, “What a relief it is to know that Jehovah will forgive our sins—even sins as serious as adultery or murder! He will do so if we have a forgiving spirit, if we confess our sins before him, and if we manifest a changed attitude toward our bad actions.”

How convenient! A person just changes his attitude and he’s forgiven.

I became sick to my stomach. I sent Bob a frenzy of messages and he finally replied, to say goodbye, to wish me the best of luck with my writing, and that everything I’d figured out about him was true. At this point I didn’t know that he’d lied about his relationship with Donna, but I’m sure he was just beating me to the punch and apologizing in advance.

The following day was a daze, but after work I went to Donna’s Facebook page and sent her a message letting her know that I was no longer seeing Bob. I told her he’d stopped responding to me, but he’d left some things at my house and I would send them to her if she wanted them. I wondered if she really had hired a lawyer, and if so, Bob’s left-behind items might come in handy. When Bob had fessed about being married (though separated and living apart) I warned him, “Above all else I believe in the sisterhood.” I suppose he thought I was bluffing.

Over the next two hours I found out that they’re not separated and they live together as husband and wife. There’s no cabin down the road. I found out that when I backed out of the Jackson, Wyoming trip he took Donna and the kids. I learned that grandma was never sick.

Donna found out that I wasn’t just a friend and that her husband and I had been having sex. Unprotected, at that. She never got too riled up. She just kept saying he would deny everything.

I offered Donna all the evidence a woman needs to prove her husband was having an affair, but when I asked her point-blank what she was going to do she said, with unnerving ease,“I don’t know.” I couldn’t believe it, and realized that there was only one person in the equation who was really surprised by this information: me.

Bob hadn’t lied to me about his previous dating; the guy is a repeat offender.

Donna said she’d wanted to contact me when she first learned about me, but didn’t want to seem psycho. She seemed glad to have heard from me, to learn the score, though it didn’t seem she was really keeping one. She told me she’d read a lot of my blog and said, “You sound like such a nice person and very down to earth. I’m so sorry this happened to you.” It had happened to her before, so she’s used to it, but she knew I’d been blindsided.

My boyfriend’s wife was sorry this happened to me…

My heart broke for this woman.

Donna had to get the kids to bed and said we could talk more the next day if I wanted to, and it didn’t occur to me until later to wonder what Donna wanted, or if Donna even knew the answer to that. In the morning I worked, and then went to the post office to mail Donna’s adulterous husband’s things to her at work, hoping she’d present them with divorce papers, though in reality she probably slid his clothes back into place in his closet as if nothing had happened.

The next morning I messaged Donna with a direct question, a question whose answer had kept me awake most of the night. I asked her if her husband has or has ever had any STDs and her response was the kind of stuff that is beyond what anyone could make up, but sadly isn’t. (This is why I prefer non-fiction.)

I asked her about STDs in relation to her husband and she sent me an emoji. Very specifically, as you can see, she sent the blue Facebook thumbs up. That is some very sick shit.

Translation: If there is no wind, row.

I really hoped Ashton Kutcher might knock on my door to tell me I was being punked, but no such luck. I asked Donna, “Is that a yes?”

She replied, “Yes.”

Donna told me he has HPV, which despite being incredibly common is also potentially deadly. I hear it can be passed through kissing—not just through oral and genital intercourse—and that because it’s so common and easily transmitted nobody even talks about it or discloses their status. I’ve never tested positive for HPV, but told Donna that because her husband and I had never used condoms I’d keep an eye out for it.

She responded by asking me why I was having unprotected sex, and I felt the sting of the stones she threw at me from her glass house. I stared at the blinking cursor for a while and debated sending an emoji, but finally decided on a numbered list. I said, “1. Because I’m stupid and 2. Because he has a vasectomy.”

Donna’s next response was almost as good as the thumbs up. She said, “He told you he has a vasectomy?” It was the last thing she said to me.

I had to get to an appointment so figured we’d pick this up later, but by the time an hour had passed Donna had blocked me so we could no longer communicate. I had no idea if she’d even tell Bob that she heard from me, or if she’d just be glad—for the moment—to have her husband back to herself.

Having been the victim of untrustworthy behavior doesn’t mean that I can’t or won’t trust again, but I also know that when we’ve been lied to—and when we’ve denied our intuition and not trusted our guts—it is challenging to return to a place of trusting our own judgment again. In general I am an excellent judge of character, but when I’m wrong I’m very, very wrong.

When I lived in Honduras I dated a native who promised me he wasn’t like other Latino men, but it turned out he had girlfriends (he was a lawyer and called them clients) on neighboring islands. I’ve never had island fever or wanted out of a place as badly as I did the day I learned that news, but I survived.

I wasn’t sure I’d survive that one. I had to figure out how to rent my house and how to get Lucky and myself off the island back to the States. I didn’t even know where we’d go or what we’d do when we got back, but we needed to go home. That adventure is another story, but it serves as a useful reminder: I survived. In fact, we all survive. I can now say I’ve survived being on both unfortunate sides of the adultery equation, and I have no doubt I’ll be better for it. I already am.

I’ve survived dating the sweetest drug addict you’d ever want to meet, who repeatedly and habitually lied to me about being high. He didn’t mean it—he was sick—but it carved away at my ability to trust myself, my judgment, my inner knowing. It was torture, though in that equation there was also love. He survived. I survived. We all survive, though the truth is that none of us get out of life alive.

A week after Bob and Donna erased me from their lives, I came home from work to find a Jehovah’s Witness pamphlet stuck inside my door, a pamphlet called “What is the Key to Happy Family Life.”

My heart raced. I opened the door to make sure Lucky hadn’t been messed with, then I ran back out onto the sidewalk to see if any of my other neighbors had a pamphlet. It was garbage day, so I looked to see whose garbage cans were still out: those people weren’t home. I check all the doors on both sides of me, but nobody else had a pamphlet. Of course they didn’t.

A pamphlet is not an apology.

I knew that the JW literature was not for me. It was for him. It was for Donna. It was for his religion that he’s committed to when it’s convenient. I’m sure its placement in my door jamb was simply a piece of the repenting process which was most definitely not about me.

I’ve learned a lot about the JWs. I’ve learned that they believe yoga opens a person to demon attacks. Jehovah’s Witnesses are advised against pursuing a higher education and see it as an improper use of time, but really they don’t want their people to educated themselves into a position of doubting the church. As an interesting side effect, Jehovah’s Witnesses have the lowest average education and income levels of any religion in the United States.

While they are against higher education (they call the educated “wordly”) they are not opposed to domestic violence. Watchtower articles praise women for staying with husbands despite violent abuse, and Witnesses are encouraged to stay with violent husbands except in extreme, life-threatening situations.

I couldn’t be further apart from these people if I tried, thoughgoodness I have tried. But I was duped. Bob outright lied. He lied by omission and he did it meticulously. Months later I still can’t figure out if I’m more disgusted that I had sex with a married man or with a Jehovah’s Witness. It was like the equivalent of doing an emotional speedball (heroin and cocaine mixed together, for those not in the know), when you think you’re simply taking a Tylenol and drinking a strong cup of coffee.

Before posting this, I did something I’d never done before: I sent the essay to my mother. I wasn’t looking for her permission or approval, but I wanted to make sure she was okay with the part that mentions her and told her that although it’s part of my story, I’d remove it if it made her uncomfortable. I also wanted her to have the opportunity to read about my most recent upsets before it went public. I owed her that.

Her initial reaction was that I think twice before “putting it out there,” but after a couple of days she felt differently and understands that as a writer I’m committed to telling my truth so that others may feel more comfortable with theirs regardless of whether they ever speak about it. But really my mother wanted to make sure that I’m okay.

In a lot of ways I’m more okay than I’ve ever been. I feel strong. I feel vibrant and alive. I have a huge smile on my face more often than not. I feel supported by my friends. In an odd way I feel healthier—both physically and emotionally—than I have in a long time. My mother asked me to promise her that I’m taking care of myself, and I did, with full confidence.

“You wouldn’t lie to me, would you?” she asked me and I laughed. “No,” I said, “I wouldn’t. I mean…I would. I would lie to you about my current state to protect you.”

She laughed and I did too, and then I said, “I promise I’m not lying now.”

There is always a silver lining.

Loving the World All Over Again

It came to my attention after my last blog post that my friends really believe in love, and they believe in the possibility of love for me even more than I do for myself. It’s not that I don’t believe in love or haven’t kept my eyes open for it, but I’ve gotten used to being content by myself, for myself, with myself.

Some of the friends who gave me public and private shout outs are deeply in love themselves, and others are on the blade side of searching. Some know this love thing firsthand and want me to have something similar, and others, like me, are on the serrated edge of (still) believing (still….) in the possibility of a thing that feels more like herding cats than cuddling on the sofa with one.

These friends said “Happy for you!” and “Cheers , Mario and Jaime!” They said “perfection,” “Thanks for the inspiration,” and “Worth the long wait.” One sent an essay about a deep love that didn’t last forever, and I appreciated that too because it’s good to prepare for everything.

I’m trying to be realistic here, but I’m also not trying to blow it or coerce something innocent into failure.

I’m struggling to simply stay present.

“Worth the long wait” confused me. Did she mean worth the long wait for the blog post, for love to arrive, or for me to finally soften to allow some love into my life? It’s hard to say, but likely it was some of each. Friends congratulated me on something hot-off-the-press brand new, something it was technically premature for me to share— but I couldn’t help myself. What I was experiencing felt so solid and secure—yet simple—that I couldn’t help but say, “I’m choosing love. I’m making a statement about what I want.”

I’ve been busy being independent, capable, and strong. I’ve been busy making plans for myself outside of a relationship because inside my last two relationships I lost my direction. In the wake of my last heartbreak I made a conscious decision to not allow the dissolution of self to happen again, but I’d also made that decision in the previous breakup so I wasn’t confident in my sketchy track record.

The line between protection and building impenetrable walls is as fine as lines come.

It’s not to say my last two relationships were bad—because in a lot of ways they were so good, and just exactly what I needed at the time—but in both I focused on the needs of my partners and neglected my own. As one of my friends said, in the midst of both, “You’re acting like someone you wouldn’t tolerate.” I love when friends are so spot on, and when they are astute enough to assess a situation and know when and how to deliver the truth not so it stings but so it guides away from inertia, the goddess of thwarted progress.

It’s natural to lose yourself in something you love. I’ve seen my friends lose themselves not only in romantic relationships, but also in their children, their work, their remodeling projects. We become unrecognizable to each other and sometimes even to ourselves. When the mirrors show up it can be hard to look so we look away, sometimes we even say “I don’t know what you’re talking about” and sometimes we say “I don’t know who you are,” but what we mean is, “Where did I go?”

I went to a palm reader once in a shopping center next to the spa I worked at. I drove to work that morning in San Francisco rush-hour traffic with a gut feeling that my first appointment wouldn’t show, and I said that if she didn’t I’d go next door and have my palm read.

I had a lot of questions about my current relationship which was filled to the brim with love, but complicated by the fact that my partner’s life contained a myriad of moving parts and I always had one foot out the door. The reader asked me to close my eyes and picture myself with my boyfriend.

We were standing in the Marin Headlands with the Golden Gate bridge as the backdrop. It was one of those days with weather so perfect you want to cry, and I nearly was crying in that photo in my mind—a replica of one we took in real life—because I knew as well as he did that what was captured with the lens wasn’t actually real. Or was it?

I had that picture in my head, as the palm reader held my exposed, naked palm and asked me to just focus on it and see what happened. It didn’t take long before the photo pixilated and I began to dissolve from the top down. First my brain, then my eyes, mouth, throat and heart, fairly slowly at first, then quicker as the momentum of my disappearing built speed. In the end I went as quickly as a stepped upon sand castle.

We think it’s the wave we need to look out for when in reality it’s the loss of balance and a misplaced foot.

In those things in which we lose ourselves it’s just as possible to find ourselves though the process can be a bit longer. Losing oneself and finding oneself aren’t the same, though one often leads to the other.

If a person finds herself, if she really sees and owns and embraces her flaws then she allows herself to be found as well. Without the seeing, owning and embracing trying to find love (I’m stealing these words from my soul sister Emily Walter) is “like trying to find cashmere at Target. Sure, it says cashmere, but doesn’t feel like cashmere.”

We’re not looking for short-strand love, people. We’re look for top-notch, authentic, real-deal love. We’re looking for the cashmere–the love–that comes from the belly, from the gut, from the place that doesn’t lie.

In the past couple of years that I’ve been mostly single a few friends (and also a few strangers) have pointed out that I’m a decent package and it shocks them that I’m “alone.” I finally came up with a way to answer this question that often feels like an inquisition: I’ve figured out what questions to ask. I know what will break a relationship for me, and I know what I require in a partner. I’ve also retired from trying to fix people and I’ve turned in my badge on being a mommy to any man full-grown enough to require a razor in his dopp kitt. I’ll add that if he doesn’t have a dopp kit we probably have another set of problems, but I add that last bit only because I like to end most of my spiels with a touch of humor, and because so much seriousness is said in jest.

As the final curtains dropped on those last two relationships, one thing was irrefutably clear: We didn’t want the same things. When we each pictured a life together we pictured different things, leading to the conclusion that there was, in fact, no “together.”

I sought therapy in both cases, wondering where I’d gone wrong, why I repeated the same mistakes and how I might achieve a different result in the future. Both therapists came up with a similar assessment: I need to choose. Being chosen is great, but it might behoove me to do some choosing.

I need to feel like I’m choosing not only the partner but also the partnership, and not dodging my own wants and needs to make room for someone else’s. Not only does that behavior not make a healthy relationship, but it’s also an unwieldy tool for distraction. When our focus is on others then we can avoid focusing on ourselves. Ouch. It’s my legacy to love like this, but it’s something I strive to change.

But here’s the rub: why is it so damn hard to break a pattern?

Ellen Glasgow was a complicated woman, but also a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist who wrote mostly fiction though one autobiographical work was published posthumously. I was introduced to Ellen Glasgow a few years ago when I discovered this quote and since then I’ve worn it on my heart like a tattoo:

So I’ve taken a break, a big, two-year break to offer myself a return to myself. In that time I’ve moved a lot. I’ve always changed houses a lot, but this time I was in actual motion (not some static excuse for progression) and in two years I’ve had addresses in four states along with several other temporary posts including a couple outside the United States. I even moved into the house with my mother and grandmother to rise to an occasion I didn’t know I was capable of but which I capably and courageously handled when faced with the inevitable.

I’ve paid close attention to what feels right and what feels like struggle; I’ve paid extra close attention to where those things overlap. I’ve sat with all of it—the joy, the discomfort, the unease, the hope—to see what my future might look like both alone and in a partnership. I came to few conclusions except, as has been the case for most of my life, I was pretty much up for anything.

I experimented with a few men, but kept enough distance so that I could bow out gracefully from what was wrong as opposed to my former pattern of blazing ahead with blinders on. I also revisited a few old relationships to see how those felt right or wrong, and what it was in them that I craved and what simply wouldn’t work. In the end it was a feeling, more than a concrete thing to put a finger on.

It’s not, in the end, about if a man is tall, handsome, or rich. It’s not about what he does for work or if he gets along with his mother. It’s not about all the stuff that I thought maybe it was about. It goes beyond the superficial to the core: how do I feel with this person? Do I feel safe, secure and like myself, or do I fashion myself and cherry-pick my beliefs to fit someone else’s ideal?

I met a woman on Ibiza about a month ago who’s been married by way of arrangement for twenty-five years. She told me that her husband is a nice guy, but she wouldn’t call it love. She travels alone and sleeps alone, but they’ve parented together and there’s no way around the fact that they will stay married. She observed me and my independence, telling me that I don’t need a man, that I’m clearly taking care of myself, and that if she were me…..

Then I met a couple—last week in Rome—who met in college and who got engaged three weeks after graduation. I asked if Mindie knew that Cory was going to ask her to marry him, and Cory said, “She told me to do it! A diamond dealer friend brought stones to graduation and then she picked out her setting!”

They were in Italy celebrating twenty years of marriage, and in all those years they’ve only spent a few nights away from each other. Other than the fact that they’re American and we started talking because of problems in Italy with Verizon, our cellular provider from home, we didn’t have a lot in common, at least not on paper, but the time they hopped in a taxi Mindie Coopersmith Jacobs and I were frantically waving goodbye like old friends.

Later that night she messaged me about how good it was to meet me and how much fun lunch was because of me, I was asking if I could write about them in a blog post, and then she was inviting me to their home in New Jersey whenever I find myself passing through. These are good people. They’re honest, they like to laugh, and the genuinely care about other people. On the surface we might live our lives very differently, but at the core I believe we share a lot of the same values.

Mindi and her husband Cory are practicing Jews, and although I was first Greek Orthodox and then Catholic I approach religion more like a buffet (but not like a potluck). I take a little from here and a little from there, but I don’t actually bring much to the table. Maybe the lasagna isn’t supposed to sit on a plate so close to the borscht, but I’m not afraid to mix and match. My gut is lined with iron.

The Jacobs had a guide plan their trip for them down to train tickets and tours, and on my second day in Rome I still hadn’t picked up a map and hadn’t booked a ticket to anywhere either within Italy or out of it. He works and she takes care of the three kids. They have a house in the suburbs and a house at the shore. They spent three years planning their anniversary trip. They’ve traveled mostly to all-inclusive resorts and even when abroad they prefer to eat American food.

Mindie and Cory would never take a risk with street food or stay abroad in a non-chain hotel. I look for where the locals eat and rent rooms—sight unseen— in strangers’ homes. He wore a money belt; I’ll drink the tap water.

They had as many questions about my life as I did about theirs, but my big question was “What’s the secret to your love?”

It’s not that I want their life—I could have had it, and actually had one step in that door when I was a bride a month after my 24^th birthday—but I wanted to understand that kind of love, the kind where a woman can’t imagine why other women take girls’ trips and the only argument they had in ten days traveling together was when he couldn’t get the picture she wanted in front of Pisa where it looks like she’s propping up the leaning tower. He eventually got the shot she wanted, and the “fight” became a good story.

Cory wished Mindie wouldn’t wear so many dresses while they were traveling, because he didn’t want to feel obliged to wear collared shirts while on his holiday from his lawyer job, but it wasn’t an actual problem between them: it was something to laugh about.

I like to laugh in relationships, but I’m also a boat rocker and have a genetically inherited skill for making a problem where there isn’t one. It’s as if I’m egging on my partner(s) to agree or disagree, and in the cartoon version of that image I’m wearing pads and a helmet, dancing on my toes, fingers beckoning my opponent forward while he juggles balls from every sport but the one we’re playing.

Love is not a contact sport.

When I’m sifting through the legions of photos I take I often stop at this one, that I took in Barcelona my first time there.

Back in May I spent nine days in Barcelona, divided between the beginning and end of my trip and two other time I passed through en route to somewhere else. I was a bit of a homing pigeon for the city where my feet touched European soil for the first time. I thought maybe it was just Europe, but although I love the other places I’ve visited, Barcelona was the one and only place where I felt, without a doubt, “I could need to must live here.”

After a night flying over the ocean and not sleeping I felt awake and alive upon arrival in Barcelona. I got disoriented a couple times in the first few hours, but never completely lost. I quickly got my bearings and a metro card and I hit that ground running. I loved:

the architecture

the aesthetic

the street art

the markets

the philosophy

the dogs (and the tea)

the city beach

the people

the little bodegas that remind me on NYC, AKA home base

the old women who remind me of Mimi

the humor

the (not so) secret messages that seem to be everywhere

But that was then, and there’s a present moment to deal with and a sweet man I’m going to see in a few days in Barcelona. I spent seven weeks working at a yoga retreat on the north coast of Ibiza, then ten nights in the south—in the historical center—before leaving the island. I met Mario on the street about an hour after I arrived in town, and although he was working at night we spent ten of the eleven days I was there together. The only day I skipped was number two, when I asked myself, “Am I really going to spend every day with this guy? For what?”

I had to shift my thinking and urge myself to realign the question. The answer was a resounding yes. In those days of brilliant sunshine where I (mostly) followed my heart with the trust of a child I kept thinking of this passage from Marianne Williamson:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

I focused on the lines: “Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be?”

I altered it a bit to fit my circumstances: Who am I to believe in this love? Who am I not to?

Mario and I think each other is something special, though I’m aware this could be just a “summer camp thing,” and taken to a new location the connection might not hold. Mario believes that “everything is possible” so he isn’t afraid—not even after five days—to talk about what a future might look like together. He talks about a simple, cozy home filled with beautiful things. He said we’ll cook together. When he said he wants to have a biblioteca (library) in the house my heart nearly exploded.

Mario says we should have two Labradors (he prefers black) so that when we have a disagreement we each have a dog to hold. He loves my expressive face and is naturally skilled at reading it, so after he said that about us disagreeing he squeezed my hand and said, “We will disagree sometimes. It’s normal. It’s okay.”

I don’t know if it was a premonition or a dare, but that afternoon we had our first stupid fight. It was actually a series of fights that had an eye of the storm, and then a sucker punch that had me wondering exactly how much of a self-sabotaging animal I really am.

In the eye of the storm Mario had a revelation. “I know why you’re acting like this,” he said, “You love me.” I just crumbled and sobbed because of course he was right. I was trying to ruin the love between us because I wasn’t sure what to do with it, or if I am ready or if I have the stamina for it.

I cried and then he cried and then I cried more. We spoke slowly and used our words carefully. In the midst of it I took this picture so I would always remember what it felt like to be cracked open and still feel safe.

In order to make room for this relationship I was going to have to let go of a few things. We made a plan to make a little ritual the next day so I could do just that. Mario took me to a place at the top of Dalt Vila, built in the sixth century and the oldest city in the Balearic Islands, which has views of the whole bay and walls around it that protected it from the Greeks and Romans.

Mario told me to get a padlock, and I had a small one so I brought that. When he saw it he worried that it might not be big enough to go around the iron post in the wall, and when we got to the spot we saw that not only he was correct, but also that the shank of mine was just big enough to go around his, already in place on the wall. He left me alone on the wall to think about what I really need to get rid of in this life, and I put all of those thoughts into the lock, clamped it to Mario’s and tossed the keys into the sea.

Perhaps I’m supposed to keep it a secret, but I’m not much for secrets these days. I said, “I don’t need to do everything alone. Being independent doesn’t have to mean being alone. Being in a partnership doesn’t have to mean given up freedom.”

Back in May, Emily and I took nine days in Portugal together to celebrate both of our birthdays but mostly it was to celebrate us. We fell in love with the Portuguese light, wine, seafood, and wind. It was a restorative, amazing time where we worked through the past and paved the way to the future. You could say our future might be paved a bit like the Portuguese streets—rough but with love—but Em and I are simply not afraid. If something seems scary we just downshift and grind through it, never thinking to shift into reverse, or worse: risk stalling.

I’ve already posted this photo in a blog about that birthday trip and it might be cheesy as hell to say this, but it’s true: the road can be both rough and full of love simultaneously.

Yes: rough and full of love at the same time. These things do not have to be mutually exclusive, and YES, I feel like I might finally have woken the fuck up from some fog where I was confused as hell about what romantic love is and isn’t. I’ve gotten friend-love down pat, but the romantic love: man that’s a squirrely little bastard.

Anyway. Emily and I are born four days apart. My birthday was toward the beginning of the trip and Emily’s was toward the end. We had full days, and I think only once or twice did we stay awake past midnight. The night of Em’s birthday eve we stumbled on a tiny pub with fun, live music. It was the kind of music you want to sing along to, and sing, smile and seat-dance we did.

We didn’t want to be wiped out for her birthday and our journey to Sagres—the place formerly known as the end of the earth— so we walked back to our apartment just after midnight and snuggled into our twin-sized beds in the upstairs bedroom. I fell asleep quickly and had a dream that I told Emily to “take my hand.” In real-time my arm was flung out of the bed and she took my hand.

I awoke startled—it’s always a shocker when the dream world intersects with the real world—and I heard Emily’s voice whispering to me, “Soph, I’m scared. Someone is trying to break in.”

My first thought was to say “that’s impossible,” but what I did was listen. Emily and I held hands in the dark and I didn’t hear anything, but then I heard what scared her: bang, bang, bang.

It was the sound of a body flinging itself against a heavy wooden door that was set in concrete. I thought about the door to the roof deck and didn’t hear noise up there, but downstairs there was definitely a door ruckus going on. It happened again and my skin prickled.

Our apartment had no cell or internet service. We had no phone to SOS the front desk. What the hell were we going to do? We’d both traveled alone extensively long before cell service, but it was 2014 and other than continue to hold hands I really didn’t know what we’d do besides turn over our passports, American Express cards, and iphones.

It turns out we really just needed to keep holding hands.

Every hair on my body stood up as Em squeezed my hand tighter. I heard voices. I heard laughing. I heard the noise again. I knew she was really scared, and I knew that it was my turn to be the brave one. After what felt like forever I figured it out.

“It’s okay, Soph,” I told her softly, “That’s not the sound of a door opening. It’s the sound of a door closing.”

I realized that the people in the apartment next to ours must have been going in and out of their front door, and their door, like ours, was probably heavy and difficult to jam into the ancient doorframe. Like ours, it seemed to requirer a few solid hip checks before it latched closed. The banging noise we heard was the sound of our neighbors getting their door closed, not the sound of someone breaking ours down.

Love is scary. The feeling of a new door opening to the possibility of new love can be just as disorienting as the feeling when a door closes on a love that once held hope and promise. As Emily and I witnessed, they can even sound the same.

The reason that Sagres was once known as the end of the earth is because although the early navigators knew the earth was round it seemed like Sagres—with its intense wind, dodgy current, and strong tides—might be a decent place to stick a flag in the earth and declare it: THE END.

Even when things feel like the end, they’re just a hair away from a beginning. It can be confusing and disorienting when figuring out if the fear comes from what has passed or what’s to come. A door closing can sound almost exactly like a door opening because—in the blink of an eye—that’s almost exactly what it is.

And when in doubt, eyes open and on the horizon is always a safe bet.

#likeagirl is how we do it

Three weeks ago I drove to Maine, on a whim, to see about a sternwoman position on a lobster boat. It made sense, but it didn’t. I’d fallen in love with Maine last year, but wasn’t sure how to go about living there. I was torn between my desire and the part of me that has a PhD in overthinking, overanalyzing, overquestioning. I wasn’t sure if it made sense, if it was worth pursuing, if Maine and I were even a good fit for each other.

I had a conversation with my mother on the beach that led to my options opening up just moments before I saw the sternwoman position on craigslist. I hadn’t considered commercial fishing an option, because who would want a woman on a lobster boat?

The situation was rife with unknowns—a state of being I gravitate toward—though there was one big question that couldn’t be answered until I was on the boat: could I swing eighty-five pound lobsters traps over the rail? I dug my heavy-duty, rubber boots out of storage, and pointed my car north to go find out.

This wasn’t a one-time thing—not like ringing the bell at a carnival strongman game for a Made in China prize—but something I’d need to sustain all day long, day after day, for several months. I first wondered if I could do it at all—the traps are not only heavy, but also a cumbersome four feet long—and then I wondered if I could do it then would I do it #likeagirl. I’m asking myself now, especially in light of the recent release of this awesome video, why anyone ever decided it was okay to slap a negative spin on doing something #likeagirl.

Not that I think what the boys do is bad or less-than what girls do, but I do some badass shit like a girl and I know some boys who also do some badass, loving, caring shit #likeagirl. Even as I wrote those words I feel silly. Can only girls be caring? Can only boys be strong? Answer: no.

I’m not exactly striving to do things the way boys do because that’s just silly. I am a girl, so everything I do is done #likeagirl whether I want to or not. As the video states, “That is not something that I should be ashamed of.”

Commercial fishing is one of the toughest, dirtiest, most dangerous jobs, and not an industry where women are commonly found. I had abundant support from friends on Facebook and in real-time as I headed up to Maine to do something slightly out of character (I enjoy manicures) and nothing I could even have predicted for myself (I don’t even flyfish). The draw wasn’t the fishing so much as spending a summer on the water, being out there in the elements where the only place to be is in the present. I fell in love with the idea of living on the eastern edge of America and being one of the first in this country to witness the sunrise.

It wasn’t until I was driving home that I saw a few Facebook comments asking questions I’d barely sideswiped in my thinking process because I was so myopic in my desire to go to Maine that I refused to let a few pesky details get in my way. A couple of those details were: why does this guy specifically want a woman on his boat? And if he’s any good why is he hiring via craigslist.

These were good questions, but not ones that would’ve made much of a difference if I’d asked them as I headed north. I was in trouble anyway, because I drove up to Maine with the decked stacked slightly for one reason that trumps all others: I had something to prove. The thing was, I didn’t seem to know exactly what I was proving.

The expectation I had for myself was physical—could I swing eighty-five pound lobster traps over the rail?—and as it turned out: I could. But my physical ability wasn’t my biggest problem, and it was actually the last thing I should have been worried about. What I needed to worry about more, and what I’d completely forgotten to consider, was pretty much every other thing about lobstering that had nothing to do with me.

The Lobsterman (TL) wasn’t terrible, but he managed to throw a few red flags into the mix before I’d even arrived. He was all business before my departure, but started flirting when I was slightly farther than halfway. I interpreted the first couple of passes as kindness (e.g., taking me for to dinner when I arrived), and didn’t acknowledge them as sleazy for one reason that’s both simple and complicated: I didn’t want to.

When I was a toddler I started telling my mother “I can’t want to.” She’d ask me to clean my playroom or put my books back on the shelves, and I’d very seriously tell her, “I would if I wanted to, Mommy, but I just can’t want to.” I get it. I totally get it. It can really be hard to do things we don’t want to do especially when they involve that which happens on an internal level. It’s hard to fake feelings. It’s hard to fake want.

For years I only went forward and if I wanted to get out of something I had to go through, which was usually not the most direct route but it was as if the path of my life was lined with spike strips that would puncture my tires if I changed direction. I’ve recently upgraded my gears and now have a reverse position, though at this point it’s reserved only for emergencies.

I spent the majority of the drive to Maine gabbing to girlfriends and sharing the bulk of what TL was texting me {Disclaimer: I read most of them while stopped for coffee, gas and walking Lucky.} I read the messages aloud to my friends, and as the words hit the air I started feeling more like I was going on a blind date and less like I was going to see about a job.

I got an uneasy feeling when TL asked me if he should shower and shave before dinner. I didn’t know how to respond, but after some deliberation I just told him the truth, which was that I’d just driven seven hours and had been wearing the same clothes for two days. That’s what I said, but what I was thinking was, “I don’t give a crap what you look like, but I’m starting to think we don’t share this point of view.”

TL’s stock had already plummeted and I had little remaining faith in his understanding of boundaries or social mores when he said, “Maybe we’ll go for a swim in the lake later….” In an effort to diffuse the situation I asked TL if the lake was heated, and he said “It’ll be hot if I’m in there with you.” Ew, right? I mean…beyond ew.

I was on the phone with a good friend who I can say pretty much anything to, but I didn’t tell her this because 1) I didn’t want her to worry, and 2) I didn’t want her to insist I turn around.

I can be a very rational person, but not when I can’t want to, and at that moment I couldn’t want to. I knew that most people would have bailed at that point and gone to have a laugh with one of half a dozen friends within spitting distance. But I didn’t want to turn around; I really wanted to find out if I could swing eighty-five pounds over the rail. My determination was absurd.

After some consideration I wrote back to TL, and told him to, “Keep it classy.” He apologized, but it felt obligatory more than it felt sincere.

I’ll be honest: when I arrived it felt like meeting someone for a date, but I made it extremely clear that I wasn’t there for that. I considered leaving a few times that first night, but wanted to locate the fine line between bailing prematurely and staying too long at the fair.

I stuck around long enough to learn that TL has lost his lobstering license twice, which (for him) included jail time and several years probation before he could put a boat back in the water. I learned that his legal troubles were a result of molesting gear and though that seems to be an activity that many (if not most) lobsterman take part in, TL seemed to be the one pushing limits, the one taking the retaliation too far.

TL bragged about the Harbor Master having it out for him and that he loves a foggy day because “they can’t see you and you can’t see them.” I wasn’t impressed. I told him he reminded me a lot of guys I dated in my twenties and thirties and that I wasn’t interested in working for someone whose emotionally fractured self is permanently stuck at twenty-seven. TL told me he needed someone like me to keep him in line, and I told him that’s what they all say, but I’m seeking full retirement from playing mommy to grown men.

I felt tested. I felt like the universe was playing a damn good joke on me. I felt like I was talking to someone who wasn’t hearing me and i knew that regardless of my desire to live in Maine, playing sternwoman for a goofball wasn’t my ticket.

There’s a lot more to lobstering that being about to swing some weight, stomach the smell of bait, and stay upright in rough water. A lot more. There’s a downright turf war going on out there, and the pirates are playing dirty. I told TL I wasn’t going to break the law, I wasn’t going to mess with anyone’s traps, and if he pulled that shit with me on the boat I’d hand in my oilskins as soon as we hit land.

He thought I was messing, playing hard to get, but I told him I wasn’t going to Maine to keep a grown man in line, and I certainly wasn’t going there for drama.

Despite it all, TL took a quick liking to me, and said that if I stayed a year my percentage of the catch would go up 30%. I told him I really had no interest in lobstering past the summer, but he didn’t hear me and said we could get an engine for his bigger boat and take it down to Puerto Rico for the winter. I told him there was no “we,” and that I was getting really tired of the fact that he hadn’t heard me when I’d told him very clearly, over and over, “There will be no romance between us.”

It had the makings of a solid rom-com, which might have been fine except that 1) I’ve never been a fan of comedies with plots that are either predictable, preposterous, or the odd combination of both, and 2) I decided a few weeks prior that romantic comedies aren’t a genre my life should aim to mimic at this point.

I’m old enough to know that romance isn’t really as light and goofy as those movies depict it, and I think that naivete in a storyline is best reserved for millenials. But the truth is that rom-com has never really been for me. I’ve always preferred a saga or an epic. I like a healthy dose of mystery, satire, and suspense with my romance. Rom-com is just so predictable, but even as I stood on the edges of my own I couldn’t see where it was headed until suddenly i was desperate to get off that boat.

It happened in a way that should be familiar to me by now—fast and innocent—but I missed the familiar cues. I could say my brain was muddy from a month following my heart around Europe’s Iberian peninsula, but that’s not true; I was simply moving too fast to have any perspective on what I was actually doing.

What exactly was I doing?

When author Ray Bradbury died last month I spent a bunch of time reading obits and essays about him and his impressive (eight million copies in 35 languages!) writing career that spanned seventy years. Despite the fact that I prefer reality over science fiction or fantasy, I appreciated Bradbury’s commitment to craft and willingness to push mainstream literary boundaries.

Right before I left for Maine I read something that couldn’t have been more carefully cherry-picked for my circumstances:

“I’m a Zen Buddhist if I would describe myself. I don’t think about what I do. I do it. That’s Buddhism. I jump off the cliff and build my wings on the way down.”

Yep, that’s me; I’m always ready to build my wings on the way down.

I didn’t fail—or fall—when I went to Maine, but I had a hard time digesting the experience. I proved to myself that I was physically able to handle the work, but after gathering additional information I did something major: I made a well-informed adult decision to not do the thing I’d just a few days earlier wanted more than anything. In short: I turned myself around.

I wasn’t afraid to use my brand-new reverse gear, and I didn’t equate backing out with failing. I was disappointed that I (still) had to go so deep to get the answers I could see clearly from the edge looking in, but we’re all works in progress.

The aftermath was the hard part. I had to dig deeper and ask: What (the heck) is it I want to do?

New York is one of the hardest places to get a massage license, and transferring my license from Montana would be a cumbersome process that might not even work. And it would take time. I thought about getting a job-job, and spent countless hours scouring ads until I had an aha! moment and remembered that there was a good reason I abandoned desk jobs well over a decade ago.

I found out that MOFGA (The Maine Organic Farmers and Growers Association) has apprenticeships and then I found out that it wasn’t too late to apply. I got excited again. I spent a day on my application, a day researching farms, and another day contacting farms. I read about the County of Waldo that is mostly agrarian and that has towns named Liberty, Unity and Freedom. An adjacent county has towns named Friendship and Hope. It just seemed so welcoming. The farms up there have equally incredible names: New Leaf, Old Crow. Fail Better. Laughing Stock. New Beat, Black Kettle, Good Karma, Rebel Hill.

Apprenticing on a farm started to seem far better than lobstering because I’d have more flexibility. I’d told myself that if the lobstering opportunity was good enough I’d sacrifice spending the summer with Lucky (because he and his grandmother have grown so close), but it clearly wasn’t. I decided only to consider farms that allow dogs. I felt like I was getting closer.

I patiently waited for the farms to get back to me, but the news wasn’t great. One farmer wrote to tell me that he actually lost the lease for his farm and was gypsy farming this summer. Another said they couldn’t take any more dogs. Another said I sounded great but they’re in a rebuilding stage and only looking for people with construction experience.

Although I really enjoy all that New York has to offer, and know it’s one of the top places on the planet for diversity and stimulation, it wears me down especially when I don’t feel like I have a purpose here. If I had to pick one or the other, it’s nature I crave far more than culture, though if you stuck me in the boonies for too long I have no doubt I’d be singing a different tune. I suppose, like a lot of people, I’m shooting for balance.

I left the city last weekend for Connecticut, where I spent forty-eight hours with an old friend literally talking nonstop. We talked about hopes, dreams, disappointments, and frustrations but never stopped laughing our asses off. A seagull pooped on me at the beach while I was there, a sign (if you’re a believer) that good things are on the way. It wasn’t like I’ve had the worst luck, but life has been one brick wall after another since I flew back from Barcelona a month ago. It was if the air deflated from my sails upon repatriation. When asked about my trip, my standard response became, “I’d have stayed if it wasn’t for Lucky.”

While waiting on the platform for the train back to Grand Central, I checked in with Facebook and saw that one of the women who worked at the yoga retreat I attended on Ibiza was looking for a ticket to Burning Man. I immediate wrote to ask if her volunteer position (work in exchange for room, board and some yoga) was available, and she said she thought they were covered but I should email. I emailed and found out that not only was the retreat needing for a volunteer for a few weeks, but they also need a chef for the majority of the season.

A few email exchanges later, The folks at Ibiza Yoga invited me to join them at Benirras Beach for the summer and early fall. First I got really excited about this new, unexpected adventure, and then I choked up over leaving Lucky. I begged him to give me an answer, and I realized that in a lot of ways he’s been telling me it’s okay to go.

Lucky has his grandmother wrapped around his finger. They got along perfectly for the month I was gone, and in our everyday lives around here he actually spends more time with her than he does with me. “Grandma’s bed” has become his absolute favorite spot in the house. She lets him up on the pillows, and she lets him hog more than his fair share of the space. She never stays out late, and gets up at the same time every morning. She’s incredibly reliable, which is what an old dog needs.

I was twenty-eight when I fell in love with Lucky after he picked me out at a party. We’ve been on many amazing adventures together, both close to and far from home, and when things have gone south he’s always been there while I picked up the pieces. My dog has been one of the most patient, reliable people I’ve ever known.

Twelve years ago I gave little (to no) thought to what our life might be like when I was forty and Luck had white whiskers and paws. Over the years I’ve declined so many things (overnight river trips, National Park visits, travel abroad, biking) because I prioritized Lucky over anything else. That level of attachment might not have been the healthiest, but it’s how we lived. I never could have imagined I’d have the opportunity to travel like this while Lucky is still alive. But here’s the thing: I’m not the only one who loves him.

I’ll go so far as to say that I think my mother and Lucky need each other right now, and what they definitely don’t need is me moping around the house wondering what to do with myself. Even though I pursued the opportunity to go back to Spain, I hesitated when I reached the threshold. I worried my leaving was selfish, wrong or irresponsible.

I wondered if my wings would open on the way down.

When I told my mother she immediately encouraged me to go without any hesitation. She assured me that Lucky wasn’t any inconvenience for her, which was my biggest concern, and she said, “I want to see you happy, and you’re not happy here.”

In less than two weeks I’ll be off to live and work on Ibiza’s piney north shore that smells better than any place I’ve ever smelled before. I’m looking forward to all of the people I’m going to meet, and to doing simple, important work so that others can have a lovely yoga retreat.

I felt connected to Benirras Beach as soon as I arrived, and about 90 seconds after I arrived I announced to one of the owners that he was going to have a hard time getting rid of me. It’s an absolute dream that I have this opportunity to return as a volunteer and that I’ll have lots of free time to swim in the clear bay, run among the fruit trees, inhale the pines, read, write, and revise whatever isn’t working.

I took this picture the day I left, and hashtagged it #lastday #benirrasbeach #fornow

It’s as if I knew I’d be back, and I suppose I did. Don’t we always know?

The 40 Train’s Leaving the Station

At the beginning of April my friend Robert came to New York for a very quick trip. He asked me weeks in advance if I could meet him for breakfast before his friend arrived and they embarked on a spree of three Broadway shows in 24 hours. I didn’t hesitate to say “Yes, of course, I’ll crawl there if I have to.”

One of my favorite things about living in NYC is that I get to see so many people. Not only do a lot of my old and new friends live there, but scads of people pass through. Because I love Robert like a brother, I planned my week around having two precious hours eating overpriced eggs in midtown and talking as if no one was around. Our booth was an oasis.

After Robert and I said goodbye and made umpteen tentative plans to see each other soon, I headed off to do a few errands. I sold some coins and a ring in a creepy diamond district office, and then headed off on a hunt to find a simple nylon band for my grandfather’s Timex. The diamond district guys offered to sell me an embossed faux-crocodile for a good price, but I had my heart set on nylon. My Poppy wouldn’t have worn nylon, but it’s what I wanted.

The watch doesn’t even keep good time. It’s a wind-up, and requires winding more than once a day. It’s unreliable and high maintenance. At first I wondered about my sanity, wearing a watch that doesn’t keep time, but I like the multi-day reminder of him, though I don’t need a watch for that.

My father gave me a classy watch for my college graduation, but it’s not waterproof or practical for every day wear. I wear it when I need a confidence boost, like for an interview, because of the inscription on the inside, “Jaime, Keep on Believing. Love, Dad.” The poignancy of his words keeps increasing as time marches on, and as keeping faith becomes more important, crucial even to surviving.

Finding a nylon watch band proved to be a major project, even in NYC, but finally I remembered the old-timey shop in Grand Central and knew they would have loads of striped, preppy bands and hopefully a few solids, but I couldn’t remember where the shop was. I knew it was in one of the passages, but which one?

I got sweaty. Frustrated. Impatient. I used Google to get the shop’s name and called, but reached a recording to call a different number that I couldn’t remember every after three redials. Eventually I had to go to a bank’s deposit station and ballpoint the number on my hand, which felt like a throwback to a different era. I found out that the hole-in-the-wall shop (literally it is a hole in a wall) was located between tracks 38 and 39, so I hunted down that area of the terminal. I was not going home without an eight-dollar watch band.

On my way there I walked by the entrance to tracks 39 and 40. I peered down the ramp and saw that there was one train, the 40 train, and it was leaving the station. The passengers had boarded and I reached the platform in just enough time to catch this picture before the train pulled away.

I haven’t had a particularly tough time with turning 40, but then again I planned a few months ago to spend the entire month of May in Spain and Portugal, so there wasn’t a whole lot to be lamenting. Except a few things. There are always (kind of) a few things. Life is not a work of art, but good god the world sure is.

I finally finished writing a book (an accomplishment I thought at times I’d never see) but I don’t have an agent or a publisher. Yet. I keep telling myself that the key word is yet. A week at a yoga retreat taught me a lot about so many things, but one that we kept repeating is that things are just as they’re supposed to be. Patience. Stick with the uncomfortable moments, the pain, the delayed reward. Sit with it.

I had such a good time in Barcelona that I didn’t want to leave, but Ibiza welcomed me like a big hug. After about an hour alone at the pool, I met four British guys who after chatting with me for a short bit invited me to dinner with them. Nazed, Abi, Gully and Azeem are all first generation Brits with roots in India and Africa, and I think all of them speak five languages. Some of their fathers were friends back home, and these boys have all been friends since they were small.

I hesitated only for a moment about going to dinner with them. My gut said it was okay, and I knew with a few euros in my pocket I could get myself home. But why? Why would they want me to join their boys’ weekend away? It didn’t feel right to question their motives, which as it turns out are as pure as pure gets.

The boys are Muslim and I discovered at dinner that they don’t drink, which reassured me because I knew that although they might get hopped up on sugary, fizzy drinks, they wouldn’t have alcohol muddling their decision making. I felt safe. They’re all about my age, and we thought we should check out the famous Ibiza “club scene” though we were early in the season (it kicks off in June) and early to the club at 10:30. Geezers.

We ended up having tea and dessert back near the hotel where I snapped this picture of them that I coined their “boy band picture.” They’re well-dressed and refined, and unlike the majority of American men they don’t throw on a hoodie or fleece when it gets cold; they wear cardigans. Their boy band name was easy to come up with: THE CARDIGANS.

I spent the next day with The Cardigans poolside, laughing and joking like old friends. These are good men. They are patient, kind, and generous. They share. We had several round of food, beverages, ice cream and chocolate and I don’t think anything hit the table that we didn’t all offer each other a taste of.

I’m already pretty blessed in the faith department, but these are the kind of men you meet who restore faith. Faith can be easily lost or misplaced, but with time it always returns. My twelve days in Spain were extraordinary for faith boosting. The kindness of the Catalayunos (a population that doesn’t accept outsiders easily) blew me away. The kindness of a group of married men who simply thought I was funny and clever, shocked and surprised me in a way I hope I never fully recover from.

It was hard to leave The Cardigans, and I stayed several hours past my intended departure time because I could and because one of my favorite things about getting older is the ease with which I identify what I want. I enjoyed the south side of Ibiza because of the company of my new brothers, but the hectic club-scene isn’t my thing; I was ready to head over to Benirras, and I told the guys I’d let them know what it was like and if anything interesting was going on.

Benirras is special. It’s the only beach on Ibiza that doesn’t have a hotel. The yoga retreat is at a couple of villas and pagodas scattered about the hillside. Down on the beach there are a few restaurants including an elegant one, a pizzeria, a juice bar and two places for paella and typical Spanish food. They recently opened a spa, juice bar, and two small boutiques. Lounge chairs and umbrellas can be rented, and that’s it. It’s perfect in its minimalism. It happens to have everything I need.

I wasn’t sure it was enough to warrant The Cardigans coming over, but then I found out that the next night (Sunday) is the night of drumming in Benirras, which started as a protest against the first Iraq war and hasn’t stopped. I emailed Gully about it, and he wrote back, “We will come. We are missing you.” I melted. He also asked if they should wear beach gear or evening wear and I said it was kind of a hippie thing and it would be chilly so they should bring their cardigans.

I told a few of the yoga girls I’d met that my friends were coming over and that at least half of them would be wearing pressed button downs. They laughed and didn’t quite believe me. They also didn’t buy that The Cardigans intentions were pure with nothing ulterior, but you only need to be around them for a few minutes to see that The Cardigans are no-joke awesome.

They are direct, which I find relaxing because it’s exhausting to try to figure out what another person wants and/or if they’re the type who even knows how to express needs and wants. They’re also dead-pan funny with spot-on delivery. In short: The Cardigans are a delight.

The drumming intensifies as the sun goes down, and the crew of us took an “Ellen-style” selfie with the addition of Lucy, who lived across the hall from me in the villa and who must be the sweetest girl in all of London, if not the world.

I think everyone feels a touch of hesitation when they’re going into a group where they’ll be living, eating, and practicing yoga with a bunch of strangers from around the world, and then an enormous relief when it’s discovered they’re not all loons. I can honestly say that I enjoyed every single person on my Ibiza Yoga retreat. I got closer to some than to others, which is only natural; we were far too big a pack to roam everywhere together.

I spent most of my time with Lucy, Lisa (Ireland) and Sarah (Chicago, but had just finished a semester abroad in Barcelona) as well as Maija (the teacher) and Leonie from Holland. I blew out my first birthday candle with Lucy and Lisa (a full week early), and then another one a couple days later at the truly awesome Bambuddha Grove (google it) with the whole group. And it’s not even my birthday yet.

I’m telling 40 loud and clear that i’m not afraid of it. I might even be taunting 40 a little bit, “Oh yeah? What you got? I can almost do a handstand by myself…”

Maija, Leonia and I went to the hippie market one afternoon and we each bought a few things they we were individually drawn to, but we also bought friendship bracelets, friendship rings, and friendship shawls. We drank friendship beers and then friendship aperol spritzes. We drew the line at friendship caricatures and friendship piercings.

Lucy gave me a bracelet from the shop in Benirras for my birthday, and I’ve layered it on with the others and have a wrist full of metal, which symbolizes the raw self and the capacity to be transformed into a higher, incorruptible self. Yes,please.

Sure, I’m tanned and happy with a bunch of things wrapped around my arms so I look exactly like someone who just came from a yoga retreat on Ibiza. I do not care. I’m nearly 40. It’s time to stop caring for real. Why not look like exactly what we are?

A lot of people don’t tell you how terrific and liberating it is to turn 40. Maybe they don’t want to brag? I don’t know. I can let you know tomorrow. Maybe there’s a hesitance to admitting they’re happy to be aging gracefully without all the silly worries and imagined problems of the twenties and thirties bogging a person down. That stuff is heavy, weighty, and cumbersome.

It’s kind of like the opposite of how nobody tells you how hard it is to be married and to parent, because if they did nobody would do it. We don’t warn each other about the tough stuff, but act all blasé about the good stuff? C’mon, folks, let’s get it together. I’m on the edge of 40 and I’ve never felt happier. True story.

I wasn’t completely sad to be leaving Barcelona because I had Ibiza to look forward to, and I couldn’t be completely crushed leaving Ibiza because I was headed to meet my Soph (will explain in a different post) in Lisbon where I’m turning 40 with one of my dearest friends whose birthday follows mine by 4 days. It’s not just a birthDAY for each of us, it’s a birthWEEK.

Our 40 train is leaving the station. Together.

A Year and A Day

I have a love-hate with the iPhoto feature that shows only the photos from the Last 12 Months. Love is scrolling to the top for a visual wake-up call that reminds, “Look. See. You’ve come so far.” Hate is “Hold up, yo. Where’d last year go?”

Up until the turn of the year from oh-thirteen to oh-fourteen I could look at my Last 12 Months and still see my life in Missoula, even if it was just the tail end of a good, long run. Then, in the first few days of January I could no longer see my life in Missoula, but the images of my leaving of Missoula remained.

Friday marked the anniversary of the day I left, and was the last day these pictures were in the Last 12 Months folder.

Now, within a short span of time (short enough to be measured in hours) my life in Missoula has vanished from my iPhoto past year’s record. The oldest photos right now are of me saying goodbye to my friend Sam, in Jackson, and then there are photos from the road, followed by the ones of my car with an elk splattered on the windshield and hood. Some things are better forgotten, except they’re not because then we’d also lose the lessons and what a shame it would be to lose the opportunity to learn.

And so it goes as a year peels away. What’s here today is tomorrow a year and a day away.

January 3rd also marks the anniversary of both a departure and a fresh start for my dear Missoula friend, Mikey Heinbach. As it turns out that was the day after he lost his job and the day he decided to get sober. Not everyone does a bang-up job the first time around, but Mikey’s a real success story. You can read his store HERE, and I’d encourage it if you need a story of faith today or any day.

Beneath Mikey’s you can also see the incredible support and comments from his friends and supporters, many of them in Missoula. And then, if you still don’t know, you can ask me why it was hard to leave a place I love, a place that gives great hugs. Yes, I’m anthropomorphizing, but Missoula really is a city that has human characteristics, its hug giving just one of them.

At times the hug of a close-knit town can feel like a net that says “Don’t worry we’re not going to let you fall. Trust us.” But it can also feel a bit like a noose. It’s a real yin-yang type of place, that Missoula, with a duality that’s deep-rooted.

There’s so much space in Montana, but sometimes it felt, to me, like there wasn’t enough to bounce off of. Living now in The City affords me more to bounce off of than any person could ever need in her entire lifetime, but here something else is lacking. Here you have to stay alert, pay attention. A person can’t just space out and go for a walk, and today I’d give just about any-any-anything to be able to hike up my beloved Waterworks Hill. I look this picture five (gasp!) years ago, on New Year’s Eve 2008. (The reason there’s nobody on the trail is because it was quite a few degrees below zero.)

When I first lived in Missoula there was a billboard-sized peace sign on top of the hill, and because i lived underneath it I used it to navigate my way home.

The thing is: I loved my life in Missoula and the people I met there are hands down the best I’ve met anywhere ever. If I ever live somewhere again and have friends half as good I’ll consider myself blessed. But despite that, when i was there I often wanted to go where nobody knew my name. I craved anonymity in a fierce way. When I left it felt like I was breaking up with the town I loved, not because of lack of love, but because we just weren’t as right for each other as we’d once been.

There were times I thought maybe we just needed to restructure our relationship. Or maybe we needed better boundaries. Or maybe just a little space, because no one person (place) can be everything to another. Then i realized maybe it wasn’t Missoula; maybe it was me. Maybe it was me in Missoula.

We parted on good terms. I changed my driver’s license and plates, but still have a bank account and a storage unit there. It chokes me up in a weird way to think about giving up those things, but that could be because I’m currently in a lengthy limbo, which my friend Emily gently reminds me is not a destination. My Missoula roots are timeless, but like most breakups that don’t end with a circle reconciliation: I’ve (kinda) moved on. I’m not even in a committed relationship with another place, but still: I’ve moved on.

{But what I wouldn’t give to be there for an hour or two on a Sunday morning…..}

I first moved to Missoula as a twenty-six year old divorcée, which was not exactly how I’d pictured it. I was young enough to reclaim my twenties (I couldn’t have picked a better place for that task!), but too young to realize that my favorite parts of my life would be the ones that missed the mark and went off the grid.

I love planning, but as it turns out the best stuff is what happens in between everything you’ve planned, in the accidental gaps where there’s just enough space for a little magic to happen. And where does this magic happen: in the places where we pause and breathe. If anyone—even the world’s best psychic or astrologer—had suggested that I’d be living in NYC (under one roof!) with my mother and grandmother I’d have suggested that person throw in the towel on clairvoyance and sign up for some vocational school classes ASAP. I wouldn’t even have explained it like crazy, I’d just have simply said, “There’s no way that would work.”

Now, the situation here is far from perfect, so far that it’s at the top of the list of most frustrating scenarios I’ve ever been involved with. The end is only occasionally in sight, and it’s a squirrely little thing that moves toward and away as it fancies. Some days are better than others, but the fact that we get along enough that no blood’s been shed is nothing short of a miracle.

I’d have bet good money against us, and I’m 33.333% of us.

I lost my footing on Friday, and not just because of Winter Storm Hercules that dumped a lot of snow on a city that has nowhere to put it. Highways shutdown and airports closed—lives were affected in big ways. Lives were lost. At least sixteen people died as a result of Hercules, including a woman with Alzheimer’s who wandered away from her house. I just kind of lost my mind.

It was 100% unsafe for my grandmother to go out, yet Mimi gets antsy when she’s trapped inside the house so we were stuck with a lose-lose situation. When Mimi’s restless she asks more of the same questions with greater frequency. Her general confusion is heightened and her tears more frequent. Her anxiety skyrockets and you can’t be a part of our household and not be affected.

To have all three of us confined in the house on a snow day under the best of circumstances could be dicey, but a few other issues left me on the brink of implosion so I took one for the team and headed for the streets. Many sections of the sidewalks were unshoveled or only partially cleared because I’m not kidding when I say this city has nowhere to put the snow, and more than a couple inches cripples the place. I think we got around eight.

Despite the single digit temps and frigid wind, I doubled-down on my down, wore a thick hat, two pairs of gloves and a scarf that I wrapped around my face. I figured tears frozen to my face would only complicate my situation. I didn’t think about where I was going, I just went, and this was probably a good thing since I wasn’t exactly in an optimal position for decision-making. Somehow, instead of going to a neighborhood that I like, I went to a place called Jackson Heights.

A few weeks ago I went to Jackson Heights to meet someone who might’ve helped me navigate my healthcare options, but it was a frustrating bust and I hated almost everything about that day including the crux moment when I decided to walk home instead of getting on the subway. In the process of walking home from Jackson Heights I discovered what it felt like to be in a real-life version of Epcot where several ethnicities are represented on every single block. On many of those blocks I didn’t see another white person. I didn’t hear English.

NYC men aren’t known for their restraint, but in Jackson Heights they get right up in your face to call you precioso or caliente. The women are pushy too. One woman touched my eyebrows and attempted to drag me into a hole-in-the-wall salon for what I could only imagine (based on the dragger’s permanently surprised face) would have been a complete violation of my eyebrows. When I dug my heels in and used the sharpness of an affected Spanish accent to make my “No!” sound more serious, she effectively questioned my decision by raising one of her penciled eyebrows at me.

I said “no gracias” to a manicure when another over-coiffed women made it clear without words that I was either blind or stupid not to do something about my naked nubs, and although her price fell with every curt “no,” eventually our eyes locked in a moment of understanding and she let me go. For the rest of the walk home I kept my pace determined and my eyes locked and loaded.

That’s the thing about international travel, or a day in Jackson Heights, or communicating with animals: so much is said through gestures. It’s what’s critically missing in email, texting, and virtual communication, and why we need to take extra care with those modes.

Actions can be louder than words and words can be louder than actions and sometimes we’re wrong. And as much as my mother might disagree, I love to be wrong. I love to have my beliefs flipped inside out. I’m tickled to discover a new way of looking at something.

I’m living in Sunnyside, which this New York magazine article lists as reason #11 to love NYC because it has cuisines from twenty-seven countries and five continents within a seven-block stretch of Queens Boulevard. It’s remarkable. While I may not be living in a bubble over here, Jackson Heights offers a completely elevated level of multicultural. I struggled to get a cup of coffee (despite knowing enough Spanish to do so), and even though I said no to azucar when asked how many I got enough in my cup to make my eyeballs twitch.

After my first trip to Jackson Heights I ~~swore~~ thought I’d never go back. It happened to be a rainy day, and by the time I got home my cotton pants had absorbed water nearly to the knee. They’d grown so heavy that I had to keep one hand on them to keep them from falling right off, so with one hand on my waistband and one on my umbrella I was quite a sight hobbling through Jackson Heights, though nobody noticed. It’s the kind of place where you can sing out loud and half walk-half dance as if you’re a backup dancer or in a Prancersize exercise video and nobody notices. They’re certainly not going to notice if you’re gimping your way down the street.

I wrung my pants out in the bathroom sink when I got home, and the water that filled it was nearly black. NYC’s streets are filthy—this is not a secret—but I think there’s extra soot and grim in Jackson Heights where the trains run overhead on an elevated track that’s open, like a roller coaster, to the ground below. Residue from the trains (including but not limited to steel dust from the tracks and asbestos particles from brake linings) falls to street level where we wear, breath and probably eat it.

So, yes the “real” Epcot even has its version of a monorail except the whole thing is far more exhilarating. At first it’s scary when a train flies by because you can’t hear the voice of a person standing a foot in front of you or the music blasting out of your earbuds. It’s hard not to imagine that at some point the track’s going to fall from the sky, but like all of the sensory onslaughts that NYC offers: you get used to it.

After that day I considered a tongue-in-cheek Facebook post about how anyone craving an international vacation—but lacking time or cash—could just take a trip to Jackson Heights. When ready to repatriate to the United Stated, explorers could travel via Woodside (which was originally an Irish neighborhood, and still resembles Ireland in places) into Sunnyside, which after Queens’ 2-legit-2-quit Epcot, feels like a quaint, serene New England village.

That night, under my covers and hiding from the world, I was positive that I’d never go back. But despite the fact that I’ve done considerable research in this department, I never cease to be amazed by the power of a perspective change, and yesterday that’s exactly what I needed. I needed to step outside my comfort zone in order to step back into myself. I could’ve gone anywhere, but I chose my nemesis.

I could’ve walked in the direction of my yoga studio in Astoria, or to the shops and restaurants in Hunter’s Point, which are right up my alley. I could’ve walked myself right across the 59^th Street Bridge to Manhattan, or down to the East River for a view of Manhattan. (This was taken in September, but the view is good any time of day or night.)

But I wasn’t looking for up my alley, and I wasn’t looking for my comfort zone. I needed an experience that would transport me out of myself for a while, and so I chose the place that almost undid me a couple of weeks earlier. I wanted to see if I might find something different there, which was of course to find something different within. I questioned my questionable judgment, but figured that the worst that could happen was that it was a flop and I’d move on the Plan B, C, D etc.

The first thing that happened—before I was even out of my neighborhood—was that I started to laugh. It’s well founded that moving the body is important for mental health, and something I’ve known about myself since I discovered track in seventh grade. I wrote about it during the dark ages of September 2012 when I ran despite unhealthy air quality in Missoula as a result of forest fires.

As I walked into “Epcot” I turned off my music, and I found that listening to the multitude of languages allowed me a mental vacation. Instead of focusing on my interior dialogue, I heard the unfamiliar words but focused on nothing in particular. I quieted. I found the pause. My laugh turned from a nervous response over entering into the unknown into a genuine chuckle. Just to play it safe, I kept walking.

All in all, I probably walked close to two hundred blocks on Friday, yet I could’ve walked a hundred more. The unfamiliar parts of the world—even the ones that are close by— ignite my curiosity and sense of discovery, and allow me to recharge and restore.

Or maybe it doesn’t so much matter where I walked, what I heard, or what I saw. Maybe I was ripe for a perspective shift, and the physical movement and change of scenery enabled me to tap into what was already inside me.

Just because time is trimming the past off my Last 12 Months photo folder doesn’t mean it’s gone. Not even close. Those pictures are like shadows. They’re there, they just don’t exist without the light.

Here’s a picture of me and Lucky in shadows almost a year ago on a rural road in New Mexico, and then another of us yesterday reflected again the side of a grocery store.

Here are a few more photos of some of the sights of Jackson Heights: 1) An Indian fabric store; location Noted, 2) Kababs and phone cards: one stop shopping, 3) I don’t think so….., 4) Discoteca, 5) Where to buy those white shoes from “Vacation,” 6) The mannequin has dance moves, 7) These kids are ready to party too…, 8) A few “everything stores,” 9) Pink Horse, 10) Hitting Lucid on the way home; lucid is one of my favorite words….What a perfect reintegration station.

SMILE THOUGH YOUR HEART IS BREAKING

Sometimes as I’m walking down the street I’ll catch a scent that reminds me of my grandmother. It’s not the aroma of a flowery perfume or a roast in the oven or the cinnamon sugar of fresh-baked pastries: it’s a sour smell. It’s garbage.

The smells surprise me. They emerge from restaurants’ grease traps, from musty, piss-soaked sections of concrete, from dank subway platforms. The volatile molecules seep out of confined airshafts or from one of New York City’s many manholes that try, but fail, to contain an underbelly overflowing with waste.

My olfactory memory engages where my grandmother’s arrests, her deficit a result of mental health issues that include dementia and OCD, both undiagnosed due to an irrational fear of doctors, both also an expression of her disorders.

The grandmother I know now is not the grandmother I’ve always known. That woman: she’s gone. Throughout my childhood my grandmother taught me many lessons that I took as truth, but only now am I questioning the validity of what she preached and modeled. She told me not to take on anyone’s problems as my own, to let life’s baloney roll off my back and, as one of her favorite songs instructs, to “Smile though your heart is breaking.”

My heart breaks for my grandmother’s lifetime of stifled emotions and for her belief that a smile is a permanent Band-Aid. It’s challenging to keep smiling as I clean up my grandmother’s life’s accumulation, as the stories my family has told disintegrate like the dust that covers her cherished collections.

I am an only child of an only child, which means there are exactly two of us to care for and clean up after my grandmother. My mother and I have spent the past five weeks sorting, donating, and disposing of the results of my grandmother’s hoarding, but walking into her house it’s impossible to tell a single thing has been removed let alone a dumpster’s worth. It looks like the woman who lives there is destitute and without anyone who cares about her, though both couldn’t be further from the truth. There’s a fine line between choice and disease.

A couple decades ago my grandmother tore up the floor in her kitchen and hall exposing several layers of the previous generations’ style choices, leaving behind the heavy ridges of rigor mortis-like glue. In the hall is a tower of tile that’s been waiting to be installed for twenty years, though for my grandmother it’s “never the right time.”

Only one of the tiles has been used though not for its intended purpose; she’s used it to cover a gaping hole in her bathroom window where a pane of glass is missing. I don’t know what happened to the window, but because my grandmother has a temper it’s not out of the question that she put her fist through it. This isn’t something she’d share with us though she’d smile, look us in the eye and deny it. She’ll do anything to preserve her façade.

Her kitchen only has hot water, several light switches are taped over, and most of the house’s wall outlets are inaccessible. Those that can be reached are overloaded with tangles of outdated extension cords that snarl in corners and run like track marks across the parquet floors.

There are two broken televisions, furniture you couldn’t give away, and orphaned lampshades stacked like miniature versions of Pisa. There are enough envelopes, blank greeting cards and paper clips to open a small office supply store. My mother has shredded a dozen thirty-gallon bags worth of bank statements and tax documents from the last century, and we’ve recycled just as many bags of long-expired coupons, cancelled envelopes and discount-store circulars.

As my mother and I remove the garbage—dozens of blown out light bulbs, a plastic whiskey barrel full of mop handles and curtain rods—we reveal additional disasters and it becomes clear: my grandmother’s house is crumbling under the weight of what it’s been carrying. It’s trying to take my grandmother with it.

Until recently you had to shimmy sideways to get from one end of the apartment to the other. Because it’s unsafe, my mother and I have threatened to call the fire department or insurance company and my grandmother responds by slamming a door in my mother’s face or telling me to pack my bags if I’m there to bust her chops. My grandmother’s lost her ability to reason, but one truth is as clear as it ever was: she doesn’t want anyone coming inside her house.

She has enough sets of fine china, sterling silver flatware from Tiffany, and glassware (for everything from apertifs to digestifs) to host dozens of guests, but there’s a catch: she doesn’t entertain. She never has. I can count the number of people she’ll invite into her home on one hand, and it’s been so long since anyone has been allowed inside for so much as a simple repair that what was once a home has deteriorated into a hovel.

My grandmother has resolutely denied anyone the opportunity to clean for her, but with the courage my mother lacks I matched my grandmother’s fierceness and finally said, “I am not going to let you die in that filthy apartment.” It started as a threat, but then there I was in a mask and rubber gloves, stuffing two black contractor bags full of moldy clothes from her bathtub. I worked for four hours in that bathroom, but she didn’t seem to notice or more likely she didn’t want to talk about it.

Last Sunday my mother took my grandmother to visit relatives, and I stayed behind to tackle the bedroom. I started by bagging up and dragging out most of the items belonging to people who no longer have a pulse. It seemed cruel, but we just can’t keep it all. What got us into this mess is not what will get us out. I repeat that like a mantra.

I found hundreds of crumpled and balled up knee-high stockings, dozens of crocheted doilies, and seventeen curtains still tagged and wrapped in plastic. I unearthed enough ace bandages for a professional ball team, at least six sets of slippers, and a mint-condition abdominal exercise machine (my grandmother is almost ninety).

I discovered a box of hundreds of laminated prayer cards for every funeral she’s been to and some that she hasn’t, and just as many keys to long-defunct locks, some of which opened doors that never even belonged to our family. I found stacks of restaurant napkins because how else is she supposed to get the rolls home?

I dug out yellowed newspaper cutouts on depression, anxiety and the danger of emotional attachments to things.

A cedar trunk and several Rubbermaid bins held enough bed linens to outfit several families, and I bagged most of them for Goodwill. My grandmother sleeps in my deceased grandfather’s old, broken down recliner in what should be her dining room, but I kept a few sets of sheets in case she ever changes her mind. Erring toward hope, I decided to freshen up the recently cleared off bed.

I pulled back the musty comforter and sheets, and saw that my grandmother had used a ballpoint pen to draw faces and write words on the fitted sheet. I crawled onto the bed and kneeled over her art for closer inspection. Some of the faces had hair, some sported sideways smiles, and some had a straight line where a mouth would be.

She signed her autograph a few times, and in black Sharpie penned a note to me, “Hi Jaime,” she wrote, “Hope all is well with you, Love ya,” and next to it a simple, “Hi Jaime” in perfect cursive. With an impossible lump in my throat I stripped those sheets off the bed.

I’ve always loved that verb for changing a bed: strip. I exposed it; I made it naked. It felt wrong—stripping my grandmother of her secrets—but someone has to do it and the job’s defaulted to me. The bare mattress was deplorable. Its satin cover has vertical splits, and a ruptured side seam exposed the inner foam and wire. Even without a body sleeping on it the mattress came undone from the weight of what’s been piled on it for years.

I located a mattress cover, a set of soft, clean sheets and a heavy, brocade coverlet that my parents bought on their honeymoon in Greece. I pulled the linens taut, tucked tight hospital corners and jammed clumpy pillows into cases and decorative shams. I made it beautiful. I made that bed as if it matters, as if it might make a difference.

When I finished I stood back, admired my work and burst into tears. When I’m doing this work with my mother I try to keep it together, but alone I let it rip. I sobbed and worried about how much of my grandmother’s turmoil is inside me, and I wondered, as I often do, why we’re so culturally adverse to showing our true feelings. And I don’t mean just my family, though we seem to have a bad case of it.

My cleaning is not going to mend my grandmother’s brain or heart, but yet I continue. I dig through the rubble and scrub surfaces in part because it needs to get done, but also because an organized exterior might calm some of the agitation that percolates inside her. I have faith and hope in that possibility, but I do this work for a different reason: I do it for love.

On some level I’m doing this work more for me than for anything or anyone else. I do it because loving someone when it’s difficult is one of life’s greatest challenges and rewards.

We have a responsibility to care for our young and our old, and often the work is terrible. I have to tell my grandmother, “You wore that yesterday. You can’t wear it today.” I don’t mention the previous days because she can’t remember those. I have to tell her when she wets her pants and needs to change, and then I have to take the soiled garments and bag them because if I don’t she’ll squirrel them away. It’s degrading for her, but I do it with as much compassion and grace as possible and I’m constantly amazed at what we’re capable of when choice is removed from the equation.

I like a plan, but my mother and I were so far out of our depths that drowning pushed in, so I hired two geriatric care consultants to come assess the situation and help us devise a strategy. The five of us sat around my mother’s dining room table—actually, my grandmother stood, too lathered to sit—and we didn’t make much progress because all my grandmother wanted to talk about was how furious she was at me for inviting strangers into our private business. I assured her I did it out of love, and she said, “If this is the way you show love I’d rather you hate me.”

She asked me who died and left me boss, told me I should be ashamed of myself, and ordered me to leave her the hell alone. The emotions passed, and within minutes she’d forgotten her anger and agreed with the consultants who told her how lucky she is to have a granddaughter who cares so much. I told my grandmother I was confused because minutes earlier she’d told me to pack my bags. At the end of my rope I asked, “Which is it?”

“I love you when you’re not giving me a hard time,” she said laughing, and my reply shocked me, “Are you telling me that your love is conditional?” The underlying causes of OCD and compulsive hoarding are immense, but among them are a fear of not being loved and a desire to receive love through control. With the added attraction of dementia, my grandmother’s well-honed defenses are down and her natural inclinations are up. To say the situation is dicey is an understatement.

One of the phrases my grandmother has always used to diffuse a situation is one she still employs regularly, “Everything is under control, baby. Don’t you worry.” For most of my life I’ve believed everything my grandmother’s told me, but those days are over. I’m no longer buying; I just can’t. It’s not helping and it isn’t the path that will guide us out of this mess.

I’ve realized that the more out of control things are the more adamantly she’ll try to convince me that they’re not. The more she smiles in the midst of chaos, the more I prepare for the bottom dropping out. I actually feel encouraged when she cries, because although it’s sad, she’s expressing her emotions without resorting to rage or compulsions. This is good. I think she’s as tired of the worn-out stories and excuses as I am.

Each day new truths manifest from the dregs, and the path is clearing. I see that it’s the truth that will get us out. Well, that and smiling.

Me. Unedited.

The other day I was all sorts of a frazzled mess, but mostly it was the good kind. I was possibly over caffeinated or excited about this book that I’m finishing (and finally not “just” writing), or a little nervous to go skiing again. Maybe it was all three. A trifecta of nerves = lovely.

I met a friend for a pre-ski lunch, and on the way there I listened to all of my favorite songs and (dangerously) glanced at my best friend in the rear view mirror, but when I got there I actually got horizontal on the bench we were sitting at in a moment of ~~pathetic~~ dramatic despair. Our server peered over the bar at me and raised her eyebrow; I sat up. I ate, I drank, and I tried everything to calm myself—including not stop chatter-boxing—but the nerves, they just wouldn’t settle.

On the chairlift I described myself as a spastic out of control toddler, then downgraded myself to an infant in need of a swaddling. My friend is something of a saint, and he told me to breathe and assured me that I’d feel better when I got my skis on the snow because the movement and meditation of skiing would take my mind off all of the baloney that had gotten me into my tizzy.

“Look up at Kachina,” he said. “Those lines on the right are super steep, but over there on the left—you’ll be skiing that soon.” I suggested he was out of his mind, but his smile and laugh said no. When we got off the chair he told me to pose in front of the peak for a picture. “You’ll love it,” he said “When you ski it this will be a great reminder of when you thought you couldn’t.”

It’s just an incredible thing when your friends believe in you more than you believe in yourself, and whether I ski up there or not (I’d gamble that I’ll hike it regardless, being the lover of uphill battles that I am….) what this really boils down to is faith. Faith in ourselves and each other to be just a little bit better tomorrow than we are today.

And I believe this is what it’s all about: embracing the courage to be yourself when it can be scary, bravery to be yourself even when that self isn’t exactly what you’re striving for. Because we’re all works in progress, and the unedited versions of ourselves are ~~usually~~ always far better than any mocked up, phony version. As I always say: Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.

So here I am with my butt stuck out a little too far, smile a little awkward, stance totally goofy. But this is child’s play compared to those pictures I posted last year of learning to surf with my rash guard hiked up and belly out and my face all “woah.” Oi.

P.S. In the coming days there will be a part 2 to this: My love-hate affair with skiing.